What is Cinema? – Magic!

Film and magic are closely related: The craziest things are possible! Unimagined metamorphoses, the inanimate is animated, children are turned into huge vegetables (MME CROQUEMITAINE, F 1909), items move as if by magic (A CHAIRY TALE, Canada 1957). What is slow becomes fast, what is fast becomes slow, characters of fables and dreams inhabit the screen, and the paranormal – sometimes – becomes visible. Right from the start of film history, all kinds of technologies have been experimented with and the pleasure of spinning tales and the magic of images still belong to the making of films today. The "Magic! Films full of tricks and magical images" program brings together shorts from a hundred years of cinema-making that feature fantastical transformations, stories of sorcery and magic, and reveal the motion picture to be magical. (Anke Hahn)