Biographies

Madeleine Bernstorff

Film curator, film researcher, author, Super-8 filmmaker and lecturer
Madeleine Bernstorff lives in Berlin and often works elsewhere. She mostly works in collaborative constellations: recent projects with Mariann Lewinsky, Sebastian Bodirsky, Brigitta Kuster, Manuela Schininá. She teaches, films and writes from time to time. A selection of some of her most recent projects includes "Frühe Interventionen: Sufragetten – Extremistinnen der Sichtbarkeit", Zeughauskino Berlin (2010), "Small Paths, Complex Stories", a film series put together with Brigitta Kuster about the (Visual) Colonialism Archive to accompany the "In the Desert of Modernity" exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2008). She has held teaching positions at a range of different institutions, including the Berlin University of the Arts (including a guest professorship 2004–2006, receiving the prize for good teaching in 2005), the HBK Braunschweig, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
Madeleine Bernstorff's project

John Blue

Musician and composer
John Blue is a musician and composer born in Portland, Oregon in 1970. He came to Berlin from New York in 2007 to collaborate with the artist collective CHEAP. He produces music in projects ranging from dance, film and theater to live performances in varying multidisciplinary contexts. His music combines traditional arrangements in many genres with experimental work involving manipulated field recordings and electronics. He created live soundtracks in Arsenal’s silent film series "Rising Stars, Falling Stars". He continues to compose and perform with artists such as Vaginal Davis and Susanne Sachsse in many projects. Most recently his work with filmmaker and brother Tim Blue was presented for the Filmmuseum München’s DVD release of Wilhelm Hein’s Materialfilme. This was performed live at the Berlinale 2009 and again in Berlin in 2013. Also during this time he completed a new album Trained to See Red with his band The Devil’s Blind Spot.
John Blue's project

Ellen Blumenstein

Curator
Ellen Blumenstein is a freelance curator, member of the curators' collective THE OFFICE and founder of Salon Populaire in Berlin. From 1998 to 2005, she worked as a curator for the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and has since curated the exhibitions "Between Two Deaths" at the ZKM Karlsruhe (Felix Ensslin, 2007) and the Summer Academy "Agulhas Negras – On the Necessity to Discuss Social Functions of Contemporary Art" in Sao Paolo / Campos do Jordão, Brazil (2008). In 2011, she curated the Icelandic pavilion at the Biennale in Venice. Since 2013, she is the chief curator of Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art.
Ellen Blumenstein's project

Oksana Bulgakowa

Film historian and filmmaker
Oksana Bulgakowa was born in Moscow, is professor for Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and lives in Berlin. She has written several books about Russian and German Cinema and directed the films STALIN – EINE MOSFILMPRODUKTION (1993) together with Enno Patalas and Frida Grafe and DIE VERSCHIEDENEN GESICHTER DES SERGEJ EISENSTEIN (1998) together with Dietmar Hochmuth. She has also curated various exhibitions and developed multimedia projects, including the "The Visual Universe of Sergei Eisenstein" website for the Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal (2005) and the interactive DVD "The Factory of Gestures. On Body Language in Film" for the Stanford Humanities Lab (2008).
Oksana Bulgakowa's and Dietmar Hochmuth's project

Filipa César

Artist
In her films, essays and installations, César explores the fictional aspects of the documentary genre and searches for experimental forms of accessing historical events. César has exhibited, amongst others, at: 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003; Kunsthalle, Vienna, 2004; Serralves Museum, Lisbon, 2005; Locarno International Film Festival, 2005; CAG (Contemporary Art Gallery), Vancouver, 2006; Tate Modern, London, 2007; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007; International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Prague, 2008; SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2009; 12th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, 2010; 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery, Vila do Conde, Portugal, 2010; Labor Berlin 5, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011; MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2012; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012.
More about the project "Luta ca caba inda" by Filipa César

Vaginal Davis

Performer and curator specialized in early cinema and queer cinema
Vaginal Davis’ role in founding the homo-core punk movement, her various conceptual art and music projects and her performance, experimental film and video works sometimes specializing in early cinema and queer cinema represent just a small fraction of the many enduring artistic chapters in her career. Since 2005, she has been largely based in Berlin while still taking on various international teaching positions and intermedia projects. She has curated the silent film series "Rising Stars, Falling Stars" in Berlin since 2007, which she also hosts.
Vaginal Davis' project

Madhusree Dutta

Filmmaker, producer and curator
Gender, citizenship and urban scapes are Madhusree Duttas chosen areas of work. Her films have been screened widely in India and abroad in film festivals, art events and retrospectives. Dutta is also the executive director of "Majlis Manch", a centre for rights discourse and inter-disciplinary arts initiatives in Mumbai, India. The centre is engaged in campaigning for cultural literacy among students and other youth groups, facilitating interfaces among practices of different disciplines, and producing plays, films and multidisciplinary art works. Her current curatorial project "Cinema City: Research Art and Documentary Practices, 2008–2012", explores the joints between the city and its cinema in the context of Bombay / Mumbai and engages with more than hundred artists from different disciplines, genres and registers.
Madhusree Dutta's and Ines Schaber's project

Martin Ebner

Artist and curator
Martin Ebner was born in Austria in 1965 and lives in Berlin and Hamburg. He studied Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna and Visual Media at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His work draws on film, video, sound, sculpture, installations, room installations, text, music and economic criticism. He publishes on a regular basis, is involved a range of communication projects, is the co-runner of the JAZZCLUB, Berlin as well as co-editor of the magazine STARSHIP. In 2005, he designed the exhibition project "Poor Man's Expression" in the foyer of the Filmhaus at Potsdamer Platz together with Florian Zeyfang. The project was based on the holdings of Arsenal’s (at that point still named the "Friends of the German Film Archive") collection of experimental films.
Martin Ebner's project

Darryl Els

Film curator and filmmaker
Darryl Els is a film programmer and researcher living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2010 he co-founded The Bioscope Independent Cinema, an alternative exhibition platform, where he currently works as the programme director.
Darryl Els' project

Heinz Emigholz

Artist, filmmaker, author
Heinz Emigholz was born near Bremen in 1948 and has worked as freelance filmmaker, artist, cameraman, author, journalist and producer both in Germany and the USA since 1973. His work has been shown in a large number of exhibitions and retrospectives both nationally and internationally and he has given presentations and published extensively in Germany and beyond. In 1978, he founded the production company Pym Films. In 1984, he began the film series "Photography and beyond". From 1993 to 2013 he was a professor at the Department for Experimental Film Design at the Berlin University of Arts. In 2003, a progressive DVD release of his films began (Filmgalerie 451). His publications include "Krieg der Augen, Kreuz der Sinne", "Seit Freud gesagt hat, der Künstler heile seine Neurose selbst, heilen die Künstler ihre Neurosen selbst", "Normalsatz – Siebzehn Filme" and "Das schwarze Schamquadrat" (all published by the Martin Schmitz Verlag), "Die Basis des Make-Up" (I), (II) and (III), "Der Begnadete Meier" and "Kleine Enzyklopädie der Photographie" (in Die Republik No. 68–71, 76–78, 89–91, 94–97, 123–125), "Die Basis des Make-Up" (Pym Films).
Heinz Emigholz's project

Entuziazm

An archive project aimed at communicating film through film
The ENTUZIAZM – Freunde der Vermittlung von Film und Text association was founded in Berlin in 2007 and is concerned with circulating and publicizing text and film formats both past and present that seek to communicate what film is. In 2008 and 2009, a project team carried out the "Kunst der Vermittlung. Aus den Archiven des Filmvermittelnden Films" project, which was aimed at researching, collecting and publicizing different audiovisual forms of film and cinema communication. Entuziazm was founded by Michael Baute, Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke and Stefanie Schlüter among others.
Entuziazm's project