Focus

Focus

The Connection: Between Plants, Humans and Other Animals
We decided to conduct a thought experiment: Everything in our world is connected to everything else, in a living network in which we all depend on one another. But what if we stopped seeing humans as exceptional beings at the centre of our existence, and tried instead to adopt more-than-human perspectives?

This radical change of perspective puts the focus on the search for non-anthropocentric perspectives and thus a review of nature films in general. What stories can be told about this? What could films dealing with this look like?

The films’ directors allow plants, stones and animals to run riot, make noises and form swarms: they interlink all of this with music and sounds in novel combinations. Out of this, beguilingly beautiful new ways to view the world emerge – sometimes as a fast-paced flickering film, sometimes on the smallest atomic level. This new gaze opens up critical views of changeable social structures and offers utopian visions of the equal treatment of the players involved – views that inspire hope. What do we see when we look at others? How do ›the others‹ look back at us?

Curators:

Previous Focus topics have included:
After Reunification 1990 | 2020 (2020)
Image Traps (2019)
In Control (2017)
Comfort (2015)
Excess (2013)
NOW WHAT – Films about Getting out of Here (2011)
Freedom (2009)
Music (2007)
Money (2005)
Kiss-proof: who’s kissing who, when and why? (2001)
Uncanny Pleasure (1997)
The Subversive Power of Laughter (1993)
The Female Machine Saboteurs (1991)

SE
2002
Experimental
3’
OW

»My work has three main characteristics. One is my interest in the relation between animals and humans. In my Animal […]

Becoming Animal

Emma Davie, Peter Mettler

CH / UK
2018
Documentary
78’
OmU

PLEASE NOTE: Becoming Animal runs only on June 17 at 8 p.m. at Schauburg Dortmund. You can’t buy tickets for […]

Civil Twilight at the Vernal Equinox

Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby

US
2021
Experimental
14’
OFe

»We are the terraformers of this new landscape: where fuel pours forth from our bodies, where consumption and extraction are […]

Diamond Belly

Anni Puolakka

FI / NL
2018
Short film
11’
OmeU

»If I sometimes feel lonely, I think about all the microbes who live inside me and across my skin and […]

BE
2016
Documentary
81’
OmU

Donna Haraway is a biologist, scientific historian and an accomplished storyteller. She has inspired people all over the world with […]

CA
2018
Experimental Documentary
15’
OFe

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is sacred land to the indigenous First Nations community of Canada; it is also an […]

Feeding the Birdies

Dagie Brundert

DE
2020
Short film
2’
OF

We don’t see much in this ambitious Super 8 wildlife documentary. The film-maker lies in wait: »A cold and stormy […]

The Connection. A Multi-Media Show The festival steps out into the public arena and brings to life the empty spaces. […]

Exercises for Being Close to You Plants, humans and other animals only have a chance of surviving if resources are […]

Reviewing nature film Which formal and aesthetic approaches can be helpful for encounters with otherness in a more-than-human sense? Experimental […]

Critter aesthetic Critter is what feminist biologist and theorist Donna Haraway calls all living creatures. In this programme’s experimental short […]

Jaime’s House

Marie Gavois, Michel Klöfkorn

DE
2021
Installation
5’
OW

A flock of sheep filmed from the air trying to find their way in a strange setting. Are we already […]