Anthropology and philosophy influence Marine Hugonnier’s films, which oscillate between documentary fiction and truth. What needs to be seen and what withheld from the public? With these questions London-based Hugonnier takes a critical and self-reflective approach to visualizing the world through film, following in the footsteps of Godard or ethnographic film maker Jean Rouch. In her last film from 2013, “Apicula Enigma” (meaning, the mystery of the bee), she takes a stand against the instrumentalization of animals and the usual comparisons drawn between bee colonies and society’s political order. In so doing she deconstructs the mechanisms of nature and animal documentaries and using the technological resources of cinema draws close to the actual order of a bee colony. Born in France, Marine Hugonnier has had exhibitions in Gateshead (UK), Seoul, Malmö and Bern, among others.

The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting the video work “My Throat, My Air” (2013, 16 min.) by Leipzig-based artist Loretta Fahrenholz. The artist’s film “My Throat, My Air” is set in a quite plain petit-bourgeois apartment not far from the Alps. The interior, the furnishings, decorations and accessories are so commonplace that the viewer can immediately decode them. Former Fassbinder actor Ulli Lommel, his partner Tea Brown and their children act out scenes from everyday family life in their apartment.

Yet the acting and staging overstate the clichés in such a way that they seem to come from a different reality. Thus at the beginning the female protagonist, in the role of the sexy pilot, asks a man in a baseball cap whether he is willing to accompany her into another world, a world in which you simply exist. The film is inspired by family narrative forms that enable alternatives to the lower middle class norm of the nuclear family, namely U.S. movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) and R. W. Fassbinder’s sci-fi radio play “Keiner ist böse und keiner ist gut” (Nobody is Bad and Nobody is Good, 1972), in which confinement, intimacy and transgression equally find expression. Following “My Throat, My Air” at the Schirn, Fahrenholz is to show her favorite film, “The Connection” (1961, 110 min.) by American director Shirley Clarke. Loretta Fahrenholz (born 1981 in Starnberg) studied at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig as master student under Astrid Klein. Her works have been shown, among others, at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, the 2014 Shanghai Biennale, Astrup Fearnley Museum Oslo, Arnolfili Bristol and White Columns New York. In 2014, she participated in the exhibition “Thinking in Film” at Kunst-Werke Berlin.

In her work, Hanna Hildebrand engages with finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. The artist, who was born in Italy in 1978, works mainly in performance and film. In the context of the Double Feature series, the artist presents her current piece, “Helianthus Coco” (2015, 15 min.), which is still in production. Subsequently, Hildebrand will be showing her favorite film, “Ace in the Hole” (1951, 111 Min.) by American director Billy Wilder.

It tells the story of unsuccessful reporter Charles Tatum. The latter ruthlessly exploits all possibilities to turn a tragic misfortune into a major story, desperate to seize what appears to be his last opportunity to become a reputable agent in his field. Wilder’s film is an almost cynical criticism of the perfidious practices of the boulevard press. Hanna Hildebrand, who studied at Frankfurt’s Städelschule, where she was a student in Tobias Rehberger’s master class, won the Swiss Art Award in 2013.

With his cinematic works American Riley Harmon addresses questions about his own identify and identification, about reality and simulation. He employs excerpts from Hollywood movies or works by other artists and expands, alters and edits them to create a new, independent work. For “Quad”, for example, Riley uses the performance “Quad” by Samuel Beckett, altering its choreography and adding sound he designed himself. In “Passengers” he begins with various auto scenes from Hollywood movies, removes one of the protagonists from the film and inserts himself instead, becoming a silent actor seeming to face someone else. Many of Riley’s works are dominated by this play of reality, fiction and cinematic montage. In the process the divides between shooting and film material, between actors, performers and real characters, between appearance and reality become blurred.

On his trip through Europe Samson Kambalu produced a series of short films that he describes as “Nyau Cinema”. Each of these films lasts no longer than a minute, is based on site-specific spontaneous performances, and takes place in urban space. In the film, the limitations and conventions of everyday life are playfully transgressed. The works of Samson Kambalu are characterized by his interdisciplinary approach. As an artist, film-maker and author he draws on a wide variety of fields and combines differing topics such as modern art history, silent movies and South-East African traditions. Kambalu studied Art and Music Ethnology in Malawi, has already published two prize-winning novels – “The Jive Talker” and “Uccello’s Vineyard” and his works features in international exhibitions for example, the Liverpool Biennial, Tokyo International Art Festival and “All the World’s Futures” at the Venice Biennale 2015.