Davi Pretto's RIFLE, a modern Western, repairs to Brazil's vast south where a young, taciturn ex-soldier guards the estate of a small-scale farmer. When a corporate outfit wants to buy the land, he resorts to drastic measures. In RIO VERDE. EL TIEMPO DE LOS YAKURUNAS (Green River. The Time of the Yakurunas), an attentive observation of the everyday life of the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon, the Peruvian brothers Alvaro and Diego Sarmiento near the slow tempo of the "green river" with impressive images. In CASA ROSHELL, the Chilean filmmaker Camila José Donoso portrays an unusual establishment in the Mexican capital: During the day, men find out how they can become women, at night it's party time. In this small utopia, all boundaries are blurred - between gay, bi and heterosexual, male and female, past and present, reality and fiction. Naturalistic and surreal at the same time, Vladimir Durán's debut ADIÓS ENTUSIASMO (So Long Enthusiasm) is one of three Argentinean films in the main program. Axel is 10 years old and lives with his mother and three sisters in an apartment in Buenos Aires. A totally normal family - if the mother were not locked up. In EL TEATRO DE LA DESAPARICIÓN (The Theatre of Disappearance), the sculptor and installation artist Adrián Villar Rojas presents a hypnotic triptych that portrays a latent state of war on different continents and in disparate styles with imagery that is at times sensual, at times seemingly randomly connected. Albertina Carri explores Argentina's complex recent history in CUATREROS (Rustlers): Isidro Velázquez was a robber and dissident in the 1960s and his life inspired a work of sociology by the filmmaker's father Roberto Carri and a feature film that has since vanished. Using archive images, the filmmaker tries to reconcile her biography with the historical context.
Other films in the program also deal with film archives and how to work with them. The Portuguese filmmaker Filipa César turns his gaze to Guinea-Bissau, where at the beginning of the 1970s the advocates of a militant cinema captured the freedom struggle and the first years of independence. César's experimental documentary SPELL REEL makes visible this film practice. Mary Jirmanus Saba's SHU'OUR AKBAR MIN EL HOB (A Feeling Greater than Love) also explores the links between revolution and cinema and focuses on the workers' struggles that might have led to a revolution in 1972/3 in Beirut if they had not been suffocated by ideological battles over the course of the civil war.
Sensory Ethnographic Lab has already been represented in the Forum and Forum Expanded with films such as "Sweetgrass" and "Leviathan" and several of its key figures return this year. In SOMNILOQUIES, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor take apart the recordings of Dion McGregor who famously talked in his sleep. In EL MAR LA MAR, J.P. Sniadecki and Joshua Bonnetta capture the Sonoran Desert - a landscape that encompasses the US-Mexican border.
The many strong documentary works in this year's program include German films. Heinz Emigholz, a known great in the Forum for many years, is back with his Streetscapes series, which loosely connects four self-contained films. 2+2=22 [THE ALPHABET] documents the recordings for the electro band Kreidler's album ABC in Tbilisi, Georgia. BICKELS [SOCIALISM] deals with the architecture of Samuel Bickels, who designed numerous kibbutz buildings and museums in Israel in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. A fictionalized dialogue between a director and his therapist, based on Emigholz's sessions with the psychoanalyst, is shown in STREETSCAPES [DIALOGUE] that was filmed in buildings by Julio Vilamajó, Eladio Dieste and Arno Brandlhuber in Uruguay and Berlin, which also turn up in the final chapter DIESTE [URUGUAY].
In AUS EINEM JAHR DER NICHTEREIGNISSE (From a Year of Non-Events), Ann Carolin Renninger and René Frölke accompany an almost 90-year-old northern German farmer who lives alone on his farmhouse for a year. The observations of daily life and nature merge into a picture of a pragmatic and resolute attitude to life.
German feature film is also represented with Nicolas Wackerbarth's CASTING. The director Vera refuses to compromise when it comes to casting the main role for TV remake of a Fassbinder film. The audition partner Gerwin meets a whole line-up of famous actresses and senses an opportunity to make a name for himself. The cast of Ursina Lardi, Andrea Sawatzki, Corinna Kirchhoff, Judith Engel and many more is fantastic.
The program will be rounded off by a retrospective dedicated to the work of the multi-faceted director and writer Ahmed Bouanani, who died in 2011. In EN QUÈTE DE LA SEPTIÈME PORTE, Ali Essafi provides a portrait of the controversial pioneer of artistic Moroccan cinema. In six historical programs, we will be screening 35-mm prints of Bouanani's films and those of his companions Hamid Bennani, Ahmed El Maânouni, Mohamed Reggab, Mohamed Afifi and Majid Rechiche.
Members of Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art are entitled to a discount on all Forum and Forum Expanded screenings (they just need to show their membership card). Discount passes that are valid for all Forum and Forum Expanded films can also be bought at Arsenal.
47. Forum
This year's regional focus is on films from Latin America. We have six works from Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico and Argentina that represent a wide range of cinematic forms.
