Snapshot Mon Amour by Christian Bau
Germany 2014, 6 min
After the catastrophe in Fukushima, a new Japanese word came into being: Genpatsu-Rikon, a word pieced-together from the characters for “atom” and “divorce”. In 2011, documentary filmmaker Christian Bau travels to the east coast of Japan to investigate this newly coined word. What did the filmmaker see? “I saw everything.” -„You didn’t see anything, nothing at all!”
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El Juego del Escondite (Hide & Seek) by David Muñoz
Spain 2014, 23 min
A film crew visits a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. The refugees are hiding from the war. The children play hide and seek. The film crew tries to stay in the background; they too are hiding. The theme of El Juego del Escondite is composed of the synergies of reality, fiction and the filming process itself. Contradictions arise when disparate worlds collide at the same time and place.
According to theory, reality is an occurrence from which only particular truths are extracted in a film. Thereby, it is expected that a film will sort the events in a particular order of significance. This process destroys reality. Simultaneously, film also wants to be recognised as the only real truth. “As a director I try to observe myself when working, how I behave when the realities of refugees and my own converge. I observe myself, watching how I observe. I feel like a stranger who – also – wants to tell his own story.” (David Muñoz)
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Daewit by David Jansen
Germany 2015, 15 min
A wolf child, a cat, an angel. Young Daewit suffers violence at the hands of his father. He is eventually rescued and able to flee the place of his abuse. He finds refuge with a family of wolves: a foster child in a modern world. Lost, he embarks on a seemingly endless journey, a journey full of riddles and deprivation. He tries to find himself, his identity – amidst the all-encompassing sorrow. At the end, he flies back to the beginning and finds peace in forgiveness.
Filmmaker David Jansen found inspiration for the film in the work of Belgian graphic designer and illustrator Frans Masereel. Processing the most diverse emotions in his woodcuts, Frans Masereel developed a noticeably expressionistic style, in which the symbolic and concrete are interwoven. David Jansen transfers that approach to this animated film, in both form and content. Narration meets association and vice versa.
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YúYú by Marc Johnson
France / Spain / USA 2014, 15 min
In the beginning there is nature. Landscape footage of the “Five Dragons” in the Yangtze Valley, the third-largest river in the world, a Unesco World Heritage site in the Chinese province of Chóngqìng, is coupled with views of the gigantic city of Chóngqìng, which resembles a juggernaut and dominates the valley.
The beekeeper Shé Zuŏ Bīn performs a traditional rite of spring on one of the rocks. He allows queen bees to be placed on his body who then summon worker bees. By the end, Shé Zuŏ Bīn’s body is entirely covered by bees. In a kind of trance, he stands utterly still. The buzzing of bees dominates all. He trusts the bees completely, and for a moment they lose all that is dangerous, terrifying. They are a protective shield.
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Bad at Dancing by Joanna Arnow
USA 2015, 11 min
Interior, Night. Matt and Isabel have sex. Their bedroom is sparse. It is silent except for their breathing. Joanna, the flatmate, enters the room and lies down right next to them on their bed. Only briefly noting this interruption, Isabel continues moving on top of Matt, undeterred.
Matt (after a while, without glancing sideways): „What is she doing here?
Joanna: „I couldn’t sleep.“
Isabel (still having sex) „Were we being too loud?“
Joanna (still lying next to them): „No…”
Bad at Dancing is a chamber piece and a comedy, a sex game. Isabel and Matt are together, Joanna seems to be pursuing Matt and maybe Isabel too. Joanna tries out various approaches to achieve her aim. The three move together, vying for control – dressed and naked. Always introversive. Always direct. Envy and emotion are given a surreal context. The question of borders and their necessity is raised anew. A rickshaw always drives on three wheels.
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Symbolic Threats by Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke, Matthias Wermke
Germany 2015, 15 min
On the night of 22 July 2014, Matthias Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf hoist two white American flags on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. They take the US flags down and fold them in the prescribed orderly fashion.
Poetry or threat? An act of surrender or perhaps art? These were the theories that New York puzzled over last summer. How can one incident be interpreted in so many ways? By means of press reports, Symbolic Threats allows the public at large to express their extreme disparity of interpretation. Inspired by the heated debate over the two flags that suddenly appeared on the towers of the bridge, the film asks what kind of societal scope art has in the present day. What happens when threatened freedom reinstates art with the element of danger? Who or what makes it into a threat? Are we safe in the city? What is next?
Berlinale Shorts 