Ghost Stories

Ghosts usually appear unsolicited and often accompany us unnoticed for a long while. We only rarely catch a glimpse of them from the corner of our eyes and we must submit to the fact that they move beyond our will. The same is true for David Bowie; Floria Sigismondi confronts David Bowie in this video with his own past in the form of a group of androgynous rock musicians who move in next door to him. He idly – and with marvellous self-irony – watches how his tranquil senior citizen existence and that of his wife played by Tilda Swinton, who uncannily resembles him, is gradually (re)infiltrated by the madness of youth. Oliver also struggles with the demons and ghosts that regularly threaten to flood his consciousness. The visually stunning illusions of the young Estonian who suffers from schizophrenia is integrated into the film by Katre Haav with the help of animation elements. In I'm Not the Enemy, Bjørn Melhus likewise concerns himself with the theme of a returning war veteran who has trouble finding his way in a society where the state of war is virtually unknown. As always, the artist acts out all the roles in his film himself – a doppelgänger par excellence. Abigail Child tells a fictional story based on the pictures in an anonymous family archive dating from the 1930s in which the approaching political disaster long seems like a footnote to history. Presence betakes itself to the realm of the Asian migrant workers who are building the boomtown of Bangalore City. In the evenings they sit in the darkness of their ramshackle Nissen hut and tell each other ghost stories while dreaming at the same time about taking the step into a life beyond invisibility.