This film tells about artistic strategies against right-wing extremist forces and how democracy is defended through artistic dialog.
Culture is one of the most important targets of right-wing extremist forces. The ideological campaign against the arts has become increasingly open in recent years, with the reintroduction of friend-foe demarcations: The local family theater is denied further funding because it attended a demonstration against right-wing extremism. The youth theater group that deals with the Nazi era has contemporary analogies removed from its text. The queer-feminist collective is threatened with violence on social media. All this and much more has happened in recent months. In BLICKWECHSEL, director Janina Möbius examines this development in dialog with Rimini Protokoll, CHICKS*, Katharina Warda, Julia Wissert and many other personalities from the worlds of art, culture and science.
Insights into performances and plays from across the performing arts not only show how they counteract the increasing polarization. When the citizens' jury in the Harz Mountains discusses and selects a queer-feminist play, the racist attacks of 2020 are retraced as a performative indictment in Hanau Town Hall and children talk about stereotypes and class differences in front of the theater doors in East Berlin, it becomes very clear how the performing arts inspire people to think and reflect together on a daily basis. And thus strengthen democracy in the long term.
A film commissioned by the Fonds Darstellende Künste.
In German and English.
Duration: 63 minutes