Along Mekong Productions

Germany 2023, 52 min
by Rabi Yansané, Emmanuelle Wagner, Rolf Lambert

The future of fashion is made in Africa. African designers are winning awards and appearing at fashion shows throughout the western world. A diverse and confident scene focused on new codes and social change.For a long time, designers from Africa or with African roots were rarely presented on the catwalks of the western fashion world. But today, they are enjoying considerable critical acclaim in Paris, London and New York. Whether streetwear or haute couture, they are redefining traditional African fabrics and textile techniques with avantgarde designs, using socially and ecologically sustainable production techniques and representing a modern, confident Africa. Politically, they are attuned to the spirit of our times. Demands for equal rights for people of colour, which have grown louder all over the world not just since the Black Lives Matter movement, are also echoed in fashion. Lagos-based Adebayo Oke-Lawal challenges gender roles with his Orange Culture label, Senegalese designer Selly Raby Kane blurs borders between fashion and art, while in Cape Town, Lukhanyo Mdingi's fashion brand focuses on social responsibility. The designers want to create local, economically sustainable structures. It's all about jobs and education. In Dakar, fashion designer Sophie Nzinga has opened West Africa's first school for fashion design. Until recently, most creative people have been self-taught.

Germany 2019, 90 min
by Hedwig Schmutte, Rolf Lambert

September 11th, 1806, the poet Friedrich Hölderlin is forcibly abducted from his then home in Homburg and brought to a mental hospital in Tübingen. There he is treated according to the traumatising methods of the time, then declared incurable. His remaing 36 years of life he spends isolated in a room in Tübingen. Taking the questionable forced abduction as a starting point the film recounts the uncompromising life path of this world-famous poet and traces his political radicalisation against the background of the French Revolution. A story about extremism, yearning and identity.