DIE KUNST, VIELE ZU BLEIBEN

In the summer of 2024, Forums for Art, Freedom and Democracy toured Germany for three months under the title DIE KUNST, VIELE ZU BLEIBEN (The Art of Staying Many) and made guest appearances in Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Berlin, Potsdam, Erfurt, Weimar and Dresden. In these eight cities, a dense program of performing arts, discourse and workshops blossomed on market squares and theater forecourts, on festival stages and in lecture halls: A Taiwanese dance piece was performed here, two philosophers discussed a humanistic world there and next door, in the transcultural beauty salon, encounters in beauty were practiced.

The actors Tina Pfurr and Hauke Heumann are right in the middle of it all. They talk to politicians and international directors, artists and social workers: How do we argue properly again? What drives the people who are defending democracy here in the summer heat? What's the point of all this if there's going to be a secure right-wing extremist summer festival in the same neighborhood square next week? And what role do the arts play in this - now and in the future?

DIE KUNST, VIELE ZU BLEIBEN is a film by Felix Meyer-Christian commissioned by the Fonds Darstellende Künste, which brings together the polyphony in the arts and summarizes their struggle against exclusion and polarization in a discursive and poetic approach. With: Şeyda Kurt, Sivan Ben Yishai, Awet Tesfaiesus, Sookee, Omri Boehm, Viktor Szeri, Joana Tischkau, Rabih Mroué, Lina Majadalanie, Annett Gröschner, Luce deLire, Carsten Brosda, Aljoscha Begrich, Anica Happich and numerous other voices.