3hd 2026: Beyond Imagining

𝟹𝚑𝚍 𝟸0𝟸𝟼: 𝔅𝔢𝔶𝔬𝔫𝔡 imagining

Looking on is never neutral. 3hd festival’s “Beyond Imagining” month-long film program at Berlinische Galerie and 3hdTV weighs the costs of our watching. Four films by four artists set a single figure, real or invented, against a force beyond their control. The state. The crowd. The camera. The institution. Found footage and essay film, allegory and impersonation each trace what gets remembered and who bears the blame for forgetting.

Sara Sadik’s “Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honneur” portrays marginalized newcomer Zabuza, who must face an initiation trial in a fictional game arena to join a military-like program, forcing them to question loyalty, strength, and the meaning of belonging. In Simona Andrioletti’s “Defence. What do you do with your anger?,” a collage of individuals attempting, and failing, to defend themselves against physical, emotional, and environmental oppression is re-filmed with a smartphone pointed at a monitor. Following a Hillary Clinton impersonator in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Simone C. Niquille’s “The Fragility of Life” questions the ownership of one‘s own image in a time of visual saturation. Vika Kirchenbauer’s “This Suffocating Now” reflects on the fascist tendencies the artist identifies in contemporary Germany, drawing on Palestine solidarity, queer and trans rights, and archival, protest, and personal footage to expose the illiberal undercurrents of a supposedly liberal society.

Alex Quicho & Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee’s “Headless” opens the program on October 29 at 6pm with free entry. Presented in front of a painting from Berlinische Galerie’s Lovis Corinth retrospective, their romance-scam thriller immerses its audience in a world staged through Telegram channels, burner phones, and music made from notifications, asking who’s really on the other end of every declaration of love. The night will close with a DJ set from NAS TEA, whose playful and vulnerable presence coaxes strangers into confessions of their own.

Image by Saish Kotecha