‘There is one moment, which unifies all travellers. It is the culmination of travel. It is the encounter with the global icons of travel. In a world of simulations we have seen all these icons long before travelling takes place: On television, in magazines, books and on the internet. In a constant search of the real we feel now, in the moment of encounter, the urgent need to reassure ourselves of the existence of these places and thereby of our own existence. Us, the travellers - in the position of the traveller. Us, as part of reality, as part of the world, as part of history. The moment captured for our return home when we write the stories of our lives: I was here, so I am. I travel, so I am.' ‘Universal tourist' is an experimental video, a documentary observation and a sociological and cultural study of a global phenomenon of mass consumer culture: it interrogates tourist photographic practices - the holiday snapshot. The video observes tourists while they act as tourists. It takes pictures of people taking pictures. It records them while they record themselves. The photographic pose of the traveller - a frozen moment to store and save memories of a staged version of how one likes to see and remember oneself is explored as a moving image. What happens before and after the snapshot? The ‘decisive moment' of photography extends and reveals more about photographic ‘truth', ‘real', staged and authentic moments. The amateur ‘accidental aesthetic' of the snapshot – immediate and raw glimpses of time – is captured on video and edited in a dramatic structure that accelerates to a furious paced trip around the globe. At each given moment of time there are hundreds and thousands of travellers from all over the world performing the same ritual over and over again. when we take pictures, we appropriate the power of the semiotic landscape by placing ourselves in the center of the resonating image, either figuratively by "taking" the picture ourselves and placing it in our personal contexts, or literally by placing ourselves or our family and friends in front of the scene that is now literally made to function simultaneously as a background for experience, location of experience, and proof of our experience of the signs of "there-ness" of the site.

Une Jeunesse Allemande tells the history of the Rote Armee Fraktion (or Red Army Faction, a German revolutionary terrorist group from the 1970s founded notably by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof) as well as the images generated by this story. The film is entirely produced by editing preexisting visual and sound archives and aims to question viewers on the significance of this revolutionary movement during its time, as well as its resonance for today’s society. In the 1960s, the young democracy of West Germany was embarrassed by its Nazi past, and ingrown in its role as imperialist and capitalist outpost faced by its communist double. The postwar generation, in direct conflict with their fathers, was trying to find its place. The student movement exploded in 1966. The pas de deux between students and the government deteriorated, and radicalized those involved in a gradual escalation of violence and reprisals. From this seething youth emerged the journalist Ulrike Meinhof, filmmaker Holger Meins, students Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, as well as the lawyer Horst Mahler. When the student movement collapsed at the end of ’68, they remained isolated in their radicalism, and desperately sought ways to continue the revolutionary struggle. The RAF (Red Army Faction) was founded in 1970, its militants disappearing into hiding. Both the government and sympathizers appeared cautious. Initial RAF acts, along with police responses, involved a certain amount of improvisation. Then came 1972, and the irreparable break: in less than a week, the RAF committed five major attacks, resulting in many victims. The government reacted by taking a hardline stance in its conflict with the terrorist movement. Casualties grew on all sides, including the RAF (both outside and in prison), government (police officers but also politicians and officials), and especially anonymous civilians. Voices questioning both the political and moral implications of the RAF’s combat, as well as the federal government’s choice for total repression, were progressively drowned out. The autumn of ’77 marked the bloody finale to this story, which was also a war of images. The government refused to capitulate to the demands of both the RAF— which sought the release of its imprisoned members in exchange for Schleyer, the kidnapped president of the Employer Union—as well as the Palestinian commandos who, won over to the RAF cause, had hijacked a plane of German tourists. That same night, the plane was taken by storm at the Mogadishu airport, and the hostages were freed, while in Germany the final founding members of the RAF who were still alive “committed suicide” in prison, and Schleyer was killed by his abductors.

The video intervention examines a scene from Antonioni's L'eclisse and frames the racist and sexist structures with which the film operates. The main character of the film visits her neighbour, who is the daughter of Italian colonisers. Her apartment is full of souvenirs. The female visitor, inspired by the interior, "blacks up" and adopts an imaginary ‘wild' and ‘tribal' dance. The video intervention tries to reveal the patterns of framing non-white culture as ‘otherness', a projection charged with a conception of uncultivated wilderness. In combination with an objectified female body, this position connects otherness with ‘naturalness' and ‘bareness'.

In April of 2013, American singer Patti Smith travels to the grave of French writer Jean Genet in Larache, Morocco. She brings him three stones, which she collected for him over 30 years ago. "There are places of yearning. There are promises that accompany us our entire lives. And there are friends, who listen and ask questions. Frieder Schlaich and Patti Smith are linked by just such a friendship. Tangier is the place, and the promise is one that was made to Jean Genet. Patti Smith has been carrying the secret around with her for many years, inside a matchbox. When chance creates a situation that brings everything together, she is able to honour her promise. Frieder accompanies Patti through the city he feels so close to, and she speaks of that which is close to her. At the cemetery they encounter a young boy who carries the spell of the story further. Two rolls of black and white film, a Bolex and the few minutes before a live performance limit the shooting time. Having the necessary concentration and knowledge of one another is what sets the film apart. The view across the ocean lies in its limitation.“ (Berlinale Shorts 2014).

The Story of the Weeping Camel is an enchanting film that follows the adventures of a family of herders in Mongolia's Gobi region who face a crisis when the mother camel unexpectedly rejects her newborn calf after a particularly difficult birth. Uniquely composed of equal parts reality, drama, and magic, this film is a window into a different way of life and the universal terrain of the heart.