On the occasion of the film and discussion series "Performing Documentary" curated by Birgit Kohler, which took place in June 2011 at Kino Arsenal, a work with texts by the invited filmmakers was published.

A new and experimental style of documentary has emerged on the Austrian and German film scene: Films that work with explicit enactments, alienation effects and performative interpretations, and literally stage the researched documentary material on which they are based. The "Performing Documentary" program brought together these documentaries and put them into a discursive context for the first time.

In addition to texts about the films in the program, this publication also contains original contributions by filmmakers, in which they reflect on common patterns of documentary representation and introduce their own approaches.

With contributions by Birgit Kohler, Tina Leisch, Anja Salomonowitz, Gerhard Friedl, Calle Overweg, Volko Kamensky, Thomas Fürhapter, Stefan Landorf, Andres Veiel and Romuald Karmakar.

Published with the support of the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Berlin.

The publication in German language is available free of charge at the Arsenal box office or can be requested via mail@arsenal-berlin.de.