Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg

A family lives in a house in the woods.

Anna is milking the cows, Jakob smokes pot, Berni works on a telescope and Ulrike celebrates her birthday. So far, everything is fine in Otto's farm. When Ulrike's coffee cup breaks on the kitchen floor, something dark breaks loose. Sometimes the devil has to take the hindmost.

The young girls Kate and Echo live in their own land of make believe. When one of them stumbles across the real world, their friendship faces a serious challenge.

A man breaks up with his girlfriend.

The setting is on a floating platform where a group of evenly and carefully placed men live. Each man is aware that the platform is not stable and in order not to fall to their deaths, they maintain a careful balance of weight to prevent the platform from tipping too far and cause them all to fall.

14-year-old Margarita is walking through the streets of a small village in Tyrol. A thunderstorm passes by at dusk and no one is on the streets. She lets herself drift, and through the brightly lit windows she observes the lives of others.

The end of a long night or Last Dance?

The one leaves, the other stays.

This video portrait by Prof. Gerd Roscher and Sünke Michel, Bergmann-Michel's daughter-in-law and photographer, explores the making of Ella Bergmann-Michel's experimental documentary films. It features still photographs from her films, which had not yet been recovered at the time, and handwritten intertitles are commented on by her son Hans Michel.

Hanqi and her friends drift through the suburban area of Hangzhou. Strolling through the concrete and neon-lit landscape of the city, they experience the transformations it undergoes daily. As they drift night after night, they become the living interface of a metamorphosis that cannot be perceived or understood if not by becoming part of it. Thus, Hanqi and her friends catch fleeting glimpses of beauty in an environment that most people would only perceive as alienating, hostile or cold. Like an ambient composition by Brian Eno or Philip Glass, the film moves through minimal variations, completely immersed in its nocturnal beat. Space becomes time.

Set in a distant and unknown land, the film follows the journey of a young woman named Yssabeau and ventures deep into a culture full of unknown rules and rituals. What kind of creatures are these that Yssabeau encounters? Driven on by her curiosity, she tries to adapt and follow the movements of these strange ‘others’. Her deepest impulses, values and beliefs are all thrown into question. How much of herself can be removed from her before she can no longer call herself "myself"?

A single mother experiences an intricate interplay between loneliness, deisre, anxiety, boredom, and dream-like states as she waits for her child to return home from a visit with their father. As the days pass, the mother becomes increasingly restless. She tries to distract herself by engaging in mundane domestic task and indulging in fantasies of romantic connection.

It’s summer and the streets are almost empty in a small town, once the centre of the metalworking industry in former Yugoslavia. People gather at the public swimming pool. Two friends are saying goodbye.

Short documentary about a Hamburg tenants' initiative that is fighting for its neighborhood.

Protagonis Alfred D. travels around the world to help people develop themselves and their countries. Just before he gets lost on one of his trips to Antarctica, a friend of his receives a box full of video tapes from Alfred's travels and recreates his life on film.

Short film directed by Eckhard Blach

Five young men ride their bicycles through the city, each of them having a piece of a huge movie advertisement attached to his bike.

Last summer we found a photograph on the street. What is to be recovered when the image is given back its movement?

A performance television show hosted by the presenter Ruth. With humor, she interviews Leila Mousavi, Nicholas Mboya, and Vicente Hirmas, graduating art students from HFBK. Filmed in July 2023.