Desire's Exhibition

Three young queer people share their experiences on what it’s like to deviate from the straight cis-norm. Throughout the film, painful experiences make room for a more positive perspective, such as the overwhelming sense of connection with millions of other queer individuals worldwide or the freedom that arises as one can relinquish certain expectations. This so-called ‘queer-joy’ is being discovered, providing inspiring and moving insights.

The sun’s energy circulates throughout the earth, feeding the cycle of life. Everything is connected in a natural loop, which repeats, like the circular discs of magical optical toys. This perfectly balanced rhythm is disrupted by human excess, throwing the cycle out of orbit and temporarily stopping the circulation of energy in nature.

Art student Ian Jing impresses the realism-loving art teacher Mrs. Hui from the get-go. Following her advice, he draws exactly what he sees, straining his eyes in the process. To Mrs. Hui’s horror, Ian’s artwork gets progressively blurrier. In turn, his online fame skyrockets, as art critics on social media praise his unique style as an abstract artist. They ascribe deep, profound (pretentious) intentions and meanings to his stylistic choices, when all he's actually doing is drawing exactly what he sees.

Locked out of the school art room, a creative non-binary teen named Frog grapples with anxiety as they seek a new place to eat lunch. Imagination blurs with reality in this hybrid work of live action and animation about finding a place to belong.

Two egg-shaped clown performers try out new ways to impress audiences.

Searching for life in daily rituals, Losing Touch undertakes a shift in perception and presents the city as an ugly yet ecologically rich landscape. The film depicts the internal dialogue on coping with the grief and fear of ecological degradation, using the local streets of Berlin as a means to materialise and confront these emotions. As both the body and mind begin to wander, encounters with the landscape over a 24 hour period are transformed into an overstimulating and emotionally charged journey. Camcorder footage, film developed in beer and cyanotype create sensational and playful depictions of the surroundings, joining the rats scurrying on the ground and fleeing the night lights with the moths. Creatures of metal and flesh interact within and between the frames, coming together as an ugly yet vibrant community. Subverting the nature-culture dichotomy, a new image of nature is formed, not only as a romantic, distant place, but rather a dirty, omnipresent force.

For Donald's birthday he receives a box with three gifts inside. The gifts, a movie projector, a pop-up book, and a pinata, each take Donald on wild adventures through Mexico and South America.

A disorienting realm where reality itself flickers and fragments. Through a visceral exploration of digital distortion and failing verification processes, this challenges your perception and dares you to question what lies beneath the surface. Are we truly awake to the genocides and wars raging beyond our privileged bubbles, or are we content to remain ensnared by manipulated realities? This is a personal call to shatter the illusions, to seek deeper truths, and to recognize the profound fortune of our existence amidst global turmoil.

A computer animation in which the camera circles around an architectural structure, only to penetrate its center a moment later. The interior turns out to be an orderly tangle of a huge number of connections. Somewhere here, new energy is born. Electronic, pulsating music sets inanimate matter in motion, and it begins to live a life of its own. The camera closely follows its movements, taking the viewer on a hypnotic journey full of surprises.

Abstract video art set to the music of Philip Glass.

Set in a parallel universe entering a black hole, a woman reading the book of Revelation has visions of regeneration during Anthropocene.

In this short film, a young man, a girl and a dog attempt to fly with wings more symbolic than practical.

For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).

An individual finds that the world that intrudes upon his personal life cannot be escaped, and he turns to the next generation.

High school student Aoi Aioi lives with her elder sister, Akane, after a tragic accident took their parents away 13 years ago. Because Akane has since been taking care of her single-handedly, Aoi wants to move to Tokyo after her graduation to relieve her sister's burden and pursue a musical career, inspired by Akane's ex-boyfriend Shinnosuke "Shinno" Kanamuro. Shinno was part of a band until he left for Tokyo to become a professional guitarist after the sisters' parents passed away, and he was never to be seen again.

Caleb, came from a rich family with extraordinary perks in almost every avenue of life, albeit sports, college or his social life. This made him attract girls from everywhere, but surprisingly, he always kept to himself. Until one day.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

A collection of solitary urban images intersect with each other.

Experimental short film that mix drawings of Jean-Luc Chansay's daughter with computer animation and sculptures of Marie Mercier.