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)

Lea

Nina Yuen

US
2014
Experimental
6’
OFe

»Now, they are coming together.« (Nina Yuen) Off-screen we hear antlers crashing against each other: two deer are fighting. On-screen […]

Meine Liebe

Clara Jost

PT
2020
Documentary
6’
OmeU

»Meine Liebe came about on the spur of a moment when I […] had to pick the only tomato fruit […]

Redbird and Other Birds

Julieta María

CA
2019
Documentary
13’
OFe

The location for this essayistic film is the area around a small suburban airport. Since the control tower is now […]

Super-8 Performance

Dagie Brundert

Dagie Brundert is processing Super 8 material in her kitchen. »I have been making Super 8 films for decades and […]

Tarpaulins

Lisa Truttmann

AT / US
2017
Documentary
78’
OmU

Termites offer Lisa Truttmann an unusual way of approaching the city of Los Angeles. The visual framework for this film […]

The Flies (The Birds II)

Susann Maria Hempel

DE
2010
Experimental
8’
OW

Susann Maria Hempel visits the ruins of her former home in Greiz and explores the beauty of decay. Her film […]

The Infernal Grove

Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby

US
2020
Experimental
7’
OFe

We watch plants blooming, withering and disintegrating in time-lapse mode – a disturbingly beautiful staging of the process of decay. […]

US
2019
Experimental
7’
OW

»›Can it be true,‹ said the first leaf, ›can it really be true, that others come to take our places […]

What a Wonderful World

Anja Plaschg, Timo Schierhorn

DE
2018
Music video
2’
OF

»I see trees of green, red roses too I see them bloom, for me and you And I think to […]

Where Shapes Come From

Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman, Joe Gerhardt)

GB
2016
Experimental
10’
OFe

In the laboratory of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. mineralogist Jeffrey Post explains how the smallest […]

US
2018
Video series
5’
OW

Shana Moulton’s alter ego Cynthia has been searching for the meaning of life and fulfilment in her video series Whispering […]

Wolves from Above

Demelza Kooij

CA / NO
2018
Short film
6’
OW

A pack of wolves filmed from above in a single shot. The wolves go about their business, calmly and intently. […]