HK 1980, D: Tsui Hark, C: Lo Lieh, Lin Chen-Chi, Albert Au, 95’, German Version, 35mm

Hong Kong as a powder keg. A consumer society full of violence and corruption on stranglehold of Western colonialism. In addition, a discontented youth that strikes the match. Three students plant a home-made bomb in a cinema. Psychotically disposed Pearl observes them and blackmails the gang to conduct more anarchist actions. A youthful-naive cell develops. The gang stumbles upon the affairs of cold-blooded American Vietnam veterans – soon a triad is interested in them. The film is a rebellious early work of New Wave director Tsui Hark, who uses inescapable images with a frantic pace to stage a tabooed subject as a visual hell ride. A nihilistic shocker about a youth threatened to go to rack and ruin if their future is taken away from them.

HK 1999, D: Johnnie To, C: Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Jackie Lui Chung-Yin, 81’, Orig. with Eng. subs, 35mm

Brother Lung’s life is sought for, so five members of his organization are going to serve as his bodyguards: Roy and his right hand Shin, weapons expert James, Mike the pistol hero and cold-blooded murderer Curtis. Without revealing much of themselves, they quickly form a team with a mission. Staged in a condensed manner, we observe this gang of men as they sparingly reveal their individual character. Johnnie To stages how a peculiar partnership develops out of the slightest physical actions and the smallest emotional impulses, always accompanied by standoffs and shootouts packed with suspense. In the end, chumminess is opposed by loyalty to the organization. A genre film between kinetic actions and moments of silence.

HK 2014, D: Fruit Chan, C: Wong Yau-Nam, Janice Man, Chui Tien-You, 124’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

A red public bus is winding its way through the urban chaos of Hong Kong. Gradually, it fills up with different characters. When the bus rides through Lion Rock tunnel, something inexplicable happens: Streets and whole city districts are empty, everything up to the passengers seems to have vanished. To make matters worse, they are haunted by strange phenomena defying human logic – resulting in seeking refuge in hallucinatory fantasies and conspiracy theories. With MIDNIGHT AFTER, Fruit Chan tells of the dissolution of an established order. What remains are disorientation and a pessimistic view into the unknown.

FR 1979, D: Paul Grimault, 81’, German version, 35mm, age: 6+

In his huge castle, a tyrant king is content with praising himself and particularly with making life hard for his animal subjects. But a talking bird with a magnificent plumage and a top hat does not want to endure all of this any longer. This is the basic constellation of the fairy tale adaptation after Hans Christian Andersen, an animated film from France bursting with fantasy. Long-since a children’s film classic there, it has yet to be discovered over here by young and old alike! That is rather astonishing, as it has quite a few parallels to the most beautiful films of Studio Ghibli.

SU/Moldavia 1993, D: Artur Aristakisyan, Doc, 140’, Orig. with German subs, 35mm

Armenian filmmaker Artur Aristakisyan shot his film essay about homeless people in Chisinau (Moldavia) already in 1990, but it premiered in 1993 as his graduation film from the Moscow All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography. In this lesser-known cinematic masterpiece, the narrator speaks to his unborn son hoping to save him from the system. Ironically, the only way out suggested by the narrator is by becoming an outcast. The images of the film, all 16 mm hand camera shots, sketch the life-stories of ten beggars. They are turned into ten poetic parables about positive and negative liberty (Isaiah Berlin) of the individual.