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102 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Anna Karina Sennefelder | Revival of the cultural stereotype? are of a similar size: the interviewees are filmed in frontal close-ups or head and shoulder close-ups, and the danc- ing and teaching scenes are mostly in medium shot, so that the dis- course-specific meaning of the images is generated through the analysis of the sound, music, language and mon- tage. The establishing shot immedi- ately signals to the audience that this will be about encountering locals, even if in this shot only the feet are visible: the sound (folk-sounding singing in the background) and the image (black feet on a colourful background) are sufficient to understand the setting. The present tense VO also plays a central role in Reiss aus; Stirnat and Wendt alternate and choose a largely sober intonation, although not as monotonous as the VO in Weit. The narrative voice and focalisation are thus very similar to that of Weit, which may be classified as a conscious adoption, given the clear role model function of Weit. However, it is striking that in Reiss aus, Wendt and Stirnat ask questions in the VO, identifying them as ‘answer-seeking travellers’ — in Weit, on the contrary, almost no questions are formulated at all. In Reiss aus, cut and montage in particular are used to symbolically underline what is com- municated in the VO. Wendt and Stirnat are in the scenes, which appear before the explanatory text in VO, and they present themselves as open and friendly, playing and dancing with the children. These images signal to the viewers (who ought to be considered as “consumers” and “producers”, due to the fact that the film was crowdfunded) that this is an intercultural encoun- ter at eye level. The encounter strives for closeness and real contact, and lets the people speak for themselves. The sound bites and the VO then tell of partly orphaned children, powerless women, hunger and poverty — in other words, of stereotypical ‘Africa topics’. The two inter- views with Mame Sy and with one of the children certainly document the efforts of a multi-per- spective representation of reality, but the description of the children is still stereotypical. These are “great” (deduced with the same category as for the “aura” discussed above) and the intensive embrace at the end — mentioned only, not shown — is supposed to emphasise this characteris- tic of “being great” once again. Apart from the fact that, as Alice Hasters has stated in her book What white people don’t want to hear about racism, but ought to know,4 “it is not necessarily a good sign when children fall into the arms of strangers just like that” (Hasters 2019: 169), the stereotyped perception and representation of these children ought to be re-examined, despite Wendt and Stirnat’s likely good intentions. The children are categorically assigned to the group of ‘poor children’, without confirming their individual family situations. The general assump- tions about the group of children are indirectly legitimized by Mame Sy’s explanations, but even by documenting her statement, it is by no means clear if the children shown are all from divorced families and are all poor. Subsequently, emphasis — although positive — is given to the fact that these children “hug Wendt harder” than she has ever experienced before, which 4 Own tranlsation. Original title in German: Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten. Fig. 7: Reiss aus, Wendt, hugging children, 18:00