We begin Remake 4's festival days with a short film programme. Once again, this spans more than 100 years of film history and introduces the festival programme. Thematically, the films revolve around group constellations: from demonstration marches to women's initiatives to avant-garde gatherings; from indigenous resistance to subcultural youth cliques to a weavers' craft cooperative.

The programme begins in London with a never-ending procession of suffragettes carrying banners and supported by a sea of sympathisers. This is followed by a much smaller protest march of strikers: LONDON FACTORY GIRLS ON STRIKE IN CAMDEN TOWN shows a group of women marching down a street carrying a banner of the National Federation of Women Workers. This organisation, founded in 1906 by Mary Macarthur, was instrumental in the unionisation of women during the strike wave of the 1910s. The film was part of Pathé's Animated Gazette, the first newsreel produced in Britain.

A leap forward to the 1970s: Katrin Seybold's short documentary is a portrait of a women's initiative that existed in this or similar forms in many places in West Germany. Through their experiences in the group, women liberate themselves from rigid gender role assignments; social benefits recipients confront arbitrary authority with self-organisation and self-help. All this is described by Ute F., who attests: "The group really changed me."

Edith Marcello and David Wittenberg documented the legendary fourth edition of the Exprmntl film festival in Knokke, Belgium, which took place around the turn of 1967/68, for the ZDF programme "Aspekte". On view are art (actions), podium discussions and protests, and faces that would later become famous: Shirley Clark, Harun Farocki, Yoko Ono ...

This '68 spirit of optimism meets post-dystopian, queer futurism in Thirza Cuthand's RECLAMATION: After the exodus of white settlers to Mars, the indigenous population remains behind and "reclaims" the violated planet. The internet no longer exists; communities must be rebuilt; colonial destruction must be healed. Yet life flourishes again.

Shared enthusiasm for music is also a group phenomenon: here's one from San Francisco in the late 1980s. Greta Snider asks "What is hardcore?" and gets all kinds of off-screen answers. One of them: "I'm punk rock, she's punk rock".

The programme closes with TEJODORAS by Ana Micenmacher and Agustina Willat, who accompany Raquel in northern Uruguay as she runs a weaving mill with other women. The group rises to the challenge of collective work, using conflicts among themselves to combat old structures and to strengthen themselves both collectively and individually.

Gaby Babić

The silent films will be accompanied by Michaela Dietl (accordion)