From “Deutsche Eiche” to Freddie Mercury’s favourite bar – Dietmar Holzapfel explains how the Munich gay scene has changed over the years.
On the River Elbe, we meet René Batistil. René was a seaman and tells us, in “180 Seconds Hamburg”, why his homeland is the sea.
Ramin Soleymani calls himself a cyborg. Between Alex and Potsdamer Platz, he sets out to find the invisible world of electromagnetism.
German-Turkish delights and a sad memory: in 180 seconds, Meral Sahin guides us through the Keupstraße in Cologne.
A hotel owner introduces us to his quarter: Shibuya. And he explains why he feels sorry for tall guests.
Cocoa biscuit, whipped cream and a very thin icing of chocolate – confectionary secrets from a Warsaw bakery.
Here in 1989 they fought peacefully for freedom. What do the citizens of Leipzig stand up for today when they meet in the Nikolai Church?
Pavement cuisine: at noon the pavements of the business district in Kolkata turn into open-air restaurants.
The Škoda factory has changed, but less so Ota Heller: with his trumpet, he has returned to his former workplace.
Symbol of power, retreat, mysterious parallel world – what is the Brussels Palace of Justice? Monologue and dialogue in a glass lift.
In the 15 November Square, the film-maker Anna Azevedo meets an antique dealer selling simple but enchanting things.
Slumbering sewing machines dreaming of a golden age, an old businessman and his son: 180 seconds “Bruck Sewing Machines”, 180 seconds Montreal.
A floating theatre company –180 seconds of the Seine, where the “Péniche Opéra” is currently anchored.
Three by four metres. Four by seven? The Madrid film crew are on the trail of the riddle; restorer Jorge gives the riddle-solvers help in the Reina Sofía.
From twenty-four hours, day and night, hustle and quiet, old and young, seven film teams around the film-maker Jian Yi distilled “180 Seconds Beijing”.
The Cologne Cathedral is known for its skaters, who were here earlier! – at least from Matwej’s point of view. The Inline Skater shows us the latest rails and curbs.
A different view of Kolkata: for “180 Seconds Kolkata” the film maker Shamik Kumar Rakshit climbed on to the roofs of the Indian metropolis.
On to Berlin, it’s the First of May! We join Georg Ismael, a 23-year-old Trotskyite, through the Brandenburg Gate to Kreuzberg and into the thick of the demonstration.
Leipzig – the new Berlin? Heaven forbid! Says Roman Grabolle. The Leipziger has dedicated himself to ensuring affordable living and cultural space in his city.
Gold buyers, prostitutes, tourists and shoppers – very different kinds of people live, work, stroll and amuse themselves in the Calle Montera.
In Hamburg live about 1,200 homeless people. One of them is Klaus. He explains why “Hinz&Kunzt” means much more to him than printed paper.
The Ethno League is about more than football. It provides an excellent opportunity to get to know Warsaw’s multi-cultural side.
Tokyo, they say, is the city of loneliness. Not so in the Shimokitazawa quarter, where civil rights activists, cat lovers and vinyl connoisseurs live and work.
At the club ATOM, in the middle of a huge estate of prefabricated houses, children and young people help one another to make their neighbourhood a bit nicer.
Terry has started a kippah experiment: he no longer leaves the house without the headwear that identifies him clearly as a Jew. How do the residents of Munich react?
Jian Yi films his city with a thermal imaging camera and measures the temperature of its inhabitants. They keep one another warm – until for one of them the city becomes too warm.
In 1999 Francesco entered for the first time the abandoned building in 59 rue Rivoli. Today the squat is a focal point for artists from all over the world.
Zwischen Montreals Bürotürmen stehen sich Demonstranten und Polizisten gegenüber. Wir begleiten den Pressefotografen Jacques Nadeau durch das Getümmel.
In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro the musician Eddu Grau wants to prove to the world that his neighbourhood is a place not only of conflict but also of art.
With its winding alleys and multi-lane roads, Brussels offers little room for bicycles. How to get to where you are going? We venture a self-experiment!
Take discarded vegetables, go to a public square and mix all the ingredients with music and socializing: together Parisians cooks and enjoy their “Disco Soupe”.
If the Internet were shut down, I’d still be online! The Berlin freecasters make it possible, setting up routers all over Berlin.
The hen Pipka doesn’t like other chickens. She gets along all better with dogs and cats and Tereza, her human roommate, with whom she shares a house in Pilsen.
At the popular weekly market in Beijing not only food is shared, but also thoughts and recipes for environmental protection and rural developments.
When is a man a man? You can find out at the Drag King Workshop in Cologne. Trousers instead of skirts, artificial beards and make-up, make Sarah and Katrin into real men.
Marga is deaf, and Javier stammers. But the two share voice and hearing and so together master the noisy everyday life of Madrid.
The FabCafe is not the only place where knowledge is shared free of charge: throughout Tokyo people learn together – how to make hand brushes, to protect themselves in a disaster and plan cities.
“Cadena” – that is the Colombian name for a private savings bank. In 180 seconds from Bogotá, Solangel reports on how friends, colleagues and relatives save together in cadenas.
Whether harvesting tomatoes or cooking pesto in the summer kitchen, not only fruit and vegetables grow in Lindenau, but also friendships.
They come from the four corners of the earth and have very different goals. Yet the residents of Kolkata share the same city, the “City of Joy”, which shows a new tint on every street corner.
In Saara, a popular shopping area of Rio de Janerio, Arabs and Jews have worked together peacefully for more than a century. The atmosphere there is one of respect and good humor.
Activists and artists set up a teahouse. Will they succeed in enlivening public space and encouraging residents to join in?
Gardens under the sun of a big city. Green roof, public garden, farmers market: an excursion into the heart of urban agriculture in Montréal.
“Time is money” is a saying. What if this were really so? If we could really pay with our time? Margaux has put the idea into practice and founded in Brussels a Time Bank.
St. Pauli has not only the Reeperbahn; it also has fruit and vegetables. They are planted, harvested, prepared and eaten communally on the Garden Deck.
Nowhere else in Munich are things so diligently shared and exchanged as at the Viktualienmarkt. Here the philosopher of economics Wolf Dieter Enkelmann discusses whether our future lies in sharing.
Everybody else calls it “rubbish”; the Material Mafia calls it “resources”. Rescued from the dumpster, objects declared as useless are given a new meaning.
In Bogotá thousands of houses have been pulled down to make way for modern residential towers rising into the sky: 180 seconds between nostalgia and zeal for progress.
Against a diffuse, global fear of the future, Gilles sets his active, local perspective and at his Microfactory cheerfully builds the city of the future.
What are the hopes of the shoemaker, what does the latex designer dream of? From Ottensen and St. Pauli, from St. George and the Portuguese Quarter, residents of Hamburg tell what they wish for the future of their city.
Why do the fools of the Cologne Carnival sing of death at the merriest time of the year? 180 ecstatic but thoughtful second from the Cologne hubbub.
At Kolkata’s construction sites work mainly immigrants. They build the city of tomorrow, yet remain invisible. The Indian film collective TAXI makes them visible.
The future of Lok Leipzig is at most Third Division, but its loyal fans don’t care. 180 seconds out of the stadium. 180 seconds of football euphoria.
Robots on the crosswalks and drones in the skies above Madrid: at the Robotics School Edu and his friends tinker and programme today the Madrid of tomorrow.
Rainer and Marion roam Montréal in search of the others. They are the reason for their despair and at the same time the only bright spot in the labyrinth leading to a vague future.
180 seconds of folk music – with accordion, felt hat and lederhosen, a student of folk music tells us, at Munich’s most beautiful corners, how to combine traditional costume with the future
Six years ago in the heart of Barbès, a Syrian family opened their bridal fashion shop. People of every extraction are among their customers.
Mostly we live as if tomorrow were infinite. The filmmaker Jian Yi and his team roam through Beijing and observe wha people do just before tomorrow comes.
180 seconds with daredevil parkour jumps and four boys who, without much interest in the future, live entirely in the present, simply waiting until today becomes tomorrow.
Forced relocations and rising rents – the filmmaker Anna Azevedo gives us 180 seconds from Rio, a city preparing for the Olympics.
Childhood dreams that will change our future – in Tokyo’s Miraikan Museum futurologists investigate what happens to society when science fiction suddenly becomes reality.
How to build nature into a city? How to preserve free zones that offer city dwellers refuge between concrete and asphalt? – 180 seconds in the municipal park of the future.
In nocturnal Athens a baby quietly cries. Strange sounds of the yet undiscovered city penetrate through the window. How does the newcomer experience this world?
Pursued by Hamas, the Palestinian writer Basem Al-Nabriss found in Barcelona the peace that he wishes for his country. Waiting impatiently for a better future, he writes.
José came with his parents from Portugal to Bordeaux 40 years ago. He guides us through the city on the River Garonne, where Old Town and modern architecture are inextricably intertwined.
Stephan has commuted by train to Brussels since childhood. The north-south connection of the city has a special meaning for him: it is art, phantom pain and typical Belgian compromise all at the same time.
Ralph comes from West Africa; he now lives in Weissenfels near Leipzig, and basketball is everything for him: favourite activity, release valve for frustration and future prospects.
Olivier Barrette plays R. For society, R., who suffers from schizophrenia, is a stranger. Released for a few hours from hospital, he fantasizes – while holding fast to a few truths.
In Nuremberg Michael operates Germany's first accommodation for lesbian, gay and transgender refugees – a refuge from fear, hatred and discrimination.
In 1979 Thomas fled from the former GDR. Today he lives in Oslo. A violinist at the Norwegian National Opera, he knows that music can give you the feeling of home in a foreign country.
Once a village on the outskirts of Beijing, Yuegezhuang filled with life in the 1980s when migrants from the southern province of Jiangxi settled there. Even after three decades, however, they still feel like strangers the city.
Her city often gives her the feeling of being alone and in difficulties. But Simona wants to lead an ordinary, everyday Roman life, even if she is in a wheelchair and doesn’t talk like the others.
Carmen doesn’t speak Basque, even though she has lived in the Basque Country all her life. To overcome this alienation from her own culture, she is taking an intensive course at a Barnetegi, a boarding school for adults.
Shobana comes from Sri Lanka. She has lived in Australia since 1998. In Sydney she teaches classical Indian dance and helps immigrants to start a new life in a foreign country.
The sound artist Eriko captures the harmonies and dissonances of Tokyo. She alienates everyday sounds and experiments with poetry between white noise and raindrops.
Fashion on the streets of Calcutta is a mix of modern and traditional elements. Six women show their passion for fashion in very different ways.
It must be individual: in Antwerp Sven Mes prints tattoo designs on T-Shirts and teaches silkscreen printing.
In the historic centre of Barcelona there is a special sewing workshop: here, with complete social inclusion, former prostitutes make bags and clothes.
Esther Perbandt is a designer in Berlin: with her fashion products – she likes plain black or white – she wants to blur gender boundaries.
Hamburg without its harbour - unthinkable. The designers of the Hamburg fashion label “Dreimaster” draw inspiration for their designs from ships and old sailors tales.
Cenon Norial III is a fashion photographer in Manila. Together with his partner Mav Bernardo, he explores the fashion and club scene of the Philippine capital.
Dima can’t hear and can’t speak. He takes in the world around him only with the eyes. In this way he travels through the strange world of the Moscow Underground.
Gunnar Lillehammer is a professional flaneur. In the streets of Munich, the fashion blogger searches for lederhosen and dirndl.
Tailors have a long tradition in Beijing's Old Town: almost 60 years ago, they came from Shanghai to the capital. Today tailor-made fashion, despite low-cost competition, is popular.
Between catwalk and habit: in Rome a novice walks between display windows of a posh shopping street and tailors for religious clothing.
They must look like 150 years ago: Shenja sews costumes for theatrical productions of Dostoyevsky's “The Idiot” in St. Petersburg.
Bethany loves fashion; at the same time she is eco-conscious. Her app “Good on You” is intended to help fashion enthusiasts to pay attention to sustainability when buying clothes.
Underway to Tokyo’s most dazzling catwalk: the Japanese-Brazilian fashion expert Diego Acqaui roams the streets of Harajuku.
Belgium’s Wild West lies in the east. Neutral-Moresnet was once a smugglers’ nest boasting its own flag and anthem, and it almost became the first Esperanto-speaking city in the world.
For two missions the astronaut Thomas Reiter was almost a whole year in outer space. At the Darmstadt Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA) he tells of his experiences there.
The inhabitants of Calcutta celebrate gaily and merrily at the river Hugli. The ceremony takes place in honour of the Hindu goddess Durga and is the most important festival of the year in the city.
Coralie and Mourad belong together: they found one another in Lille, in the district of Fives. They want to go their way together, because love and trust are for them the most important things in life.
Once a shepherd’s trail traversing all of Spain, the Cañada Real near Madrid is now a 16 kilometres long informal settlement. The nine-year-old Fátima shows where she lives and where she plays and goes to school with her friends.
For about a hundred years the family of Manuel Salazar has lived in the countryside south of Manila. Manuel and his son Nikolo talk about country life and the belief in spirits and enchanted beings in the forest.
The Munich poet Ayna Steigerwald knows her way around the periphery. The north of Munich, where the Panzerwiese is surrounded by long lines of cars, shopping centres and high-rise buildings, is her home.
Life is cheaper here: every morning tens of thousands of people drive from the bedroom community of Yanjiao to their working places in the centre of Beijing. It is only in the evening that they return to the settlement to sleep.
Where formerly Czech nobles brewed their beer, today live many young Roma. In Prague’s Nusle district they spend their time making rap music.
Vanished from one moment to the next: Rosella’s husband Mario was picked up by the police on 30 April 1987 at 6:20 in the morning and never returned. Rosella looks for answers.
Fátima lives with her family on the island of Bororé in the southernmost part of São Paulo. At the weekend they sell snacks and drinks to day-trippers who take the ferry to the island.
The Royal National Park is just an hour away from the hustle and bustle of Sydney. Jonnie Swift guides tourists through the breath-taking nature in the park.
Masanori Kondo commutes every day between Chiba und Tokyo. The most important thing for him is time with his family, because his own father rarely came home early.