Film: DIE KUNST, VIELE ZU BLEIBEN (The Art of Staying Many)

In the summer of 2024, Forums for Art, Freedom and Democracy toured Germany for three months under the title DIE KUNST, VIELE ZU BLEIBEN 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 (The Art of Staying Many) 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.
 

Length: approx. 90 minutes
In German, English and Spanish with English subtitles for deaf people.
 

After its premiere in March 2025, the film will be shown at festivals, venues and theaters of the independent performing arts.

The film will celebrate its premiere on March 12, 2025 at the Sophiensaele in Berlin - together with guests and pioneers from 40 years of the Fonds Darstellende Künste. Claudia Roth, Member of the Bundestag/Minister of State for Culture (20th legislative period), and Milo Rau, Director of the Wiener Festwochen, who has been calling internationally for dialog and solidarity against the right-wing influence on art and the “disintegration of a civil society that has long since ceased to be ‘national’” with the “RESISTANCE NOW” tour (link: https://www.festwochen.at/resistance-now-tour), which has been running since 2024, will provide a retrospective and outlook on politics, society and current affairs. The question of an art of remaining many knows no borders.

At the reception afterwards, Wolfgang Schneider and Amelie Deufelhard (Board of the Fonds) pay tribute to the strong commitment of the member associations and their actors to the independent performing arts across Germany over the past 40 years.
 

After its premiere, the film by Felix Meyer-Christian commissioned by the Fonds will be shown at festivals, venues and theaters of the independent performing arts.