Created using still and moving images sourced from NASA’s STEREO satellite solar observation mission, “Black Rain” turns unprocessed scientific data into a raw and glitched-out perspective on nearby interplanetary space. Embracing the artefacts, the film gives us an unmanicured and almost voyeuristic view of space, distant from the glamour of sci-fi or the carefully colourised images normally released by NASA to the press, as we track solar winds, coronal mass ejections and passing comets, sometimes recognisable only as blurs of lines and pixels, across a monochrome background of stars and the milky way.

Ben Sassen

Everyone who longs for tenderness is welcome aboard the Pompelmo Express, a huge pink rocket ship. Together with a number of diverse passengers who shimmer in all the colours of the rainbow, Delfino, Rita and Zenf journey through the cosmos of possibilities. While a party rages on in the spaceship, Zenf discovers a fiery comet through his huge telescope. At an atmospheric tea party, Delfino falls head over heels in love with Carlos, and Rita begins to quarrel with her body. The infinite expanse and warm darkness of space envelop the friends benignly and offer a space to live out the most varied needs. “Say goodbye to your lonely days.”

Franka Sachse

“El primer año” documents the first year of the Unidad Popular: the rude awakening of the ruling classes of Chile as they are faced with the democratically elected socialist government. From the immediate economic sabotage of the right wing through celebrating workers, the situation of the Mapuche, the agrarian reform, the nationalisation of coal and copper mining and Fidel Castro’s visit, up to the “March of the Pots” by bourgeois women crying for bread, of which they have plenty, the cycle of achievements and difficulties is complete. Besides their journalistic interest, Patricio Guzmán and his collaborators sought to capture the atmospheric aspect of the departure towards a fairer society under Salvador Allende, which is what makes “El primer año” such a moving document of its time. Chris Marker offered to produce a French version with the help of the SLON film collective, which is preceded by photographs by Raymond Depardon, accompanied by a foreword on the history of Chile. Guzmán continued his work on the chronicle of events until he was forced to leave the country after the military coup of 11 September 1973. It was only in Cuban exile that he was able to successively finish his masterpiece “La Batalla de Chile” (1975-79) together with Pedro Chaskel. Each of its three parts was acclaimed at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week and the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

Romantic, mystical, folkloristic: Theodor Kittelsen's (1857–1914) oeuvre as a painter is not just dedicated to nature but also to legends and trolls – and has influenced artists to the present day. Natasha Nikitina for example, whose film takes up Kittelsen's twelve-part series of pictures "Soria Moria Palace" and his eponymous book: The young hero Askeladden sees the golden palace of Soria Moria in the distance and sets out to reach it; an allegory of the golden future that can be earned with a lot of hard work and dedication. In her film, however, Nikitina focuses more on the atmospheric element, letting a troll in a rock wake up and fall asleep again, letting geese and other birds take flight, letting fog and dusk turn into night and back into a glowing morning. A tribute to the artist, but also to the myth-enshrouded Norwegian landscape in general.

Marie Ketzscher

Cranes on flat country. A Taiwanese chip giant is building Europe’s biggest semiconductor factory north of Dresden. The “building blocks of modern economy” play a central role against China, the USA, the rest of the world … Yet it is precisely in this place, where the new is grandly heralded, that a “forgotten future” lies buried. This was the centre of GDR semiconductor research, which strove to realise a social utopia by means of microelectronics. Some see the chip as a “weapon” in the fight for economic dominance and profit, others saw it as a political programme on the path to the “new human”. Jonas Meschede mixes neon-coloured images of a futuristic setting from the cleanrooms of the present with GDR science fiction and archive footage, unearthing what was buried. Once more, the promises of a golden future appear at the end. And the certainty that in the ground on which its gleaming factories are built what was declared dead only lies dormant.

Grit Lemke

In November 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA), as part of the SWARM Mission, launched three identical satellites into orbit to study our home planet’s magnetic field more closely. The translation of the measured data into sound makes the fluctuations in the magnetic field of our planet audible. Kamil Czapiga, whose intermedia art project “Cosmodernism”, founded in 2019, is an exploration of a very personal version of abstraction in the micro- and macrocosm, combines these sounds with fascinating material from his moving image universe. Even though they seem alien and unreal, his compositions are made from entirely earthly ingredients like oils, dyed water and magnetic liquids, which are stimulated to undergo chemical reactions in microscopically small film sets. Home-made mechanisms and special lighting enhance the resulting footage to a visual experience that seems out of this world.

Franka Sachse

Created in collaboration with the European Space Agency