As part of the School Cinema Weeks, students can experiment with sounds and noises and set a short film to music at Arsenal on November 18. Inspiration will be provided by the apparently still silent LE TONNERRE DE JUPITER (Georges Méliès), the chirping in A MAN AND HIS DOG OUT FOR AIR (Robert Breer), swirling sounds in ROOTS (Bärbel Neubauer), M.M. Serra's PP II, and other films by Jean Mitry and Marie Menken. 5th grade and above. Registration required.

Another event for children aged 5 and up takes place on Sunday, October 31. “The color is the key, the eye is the hammer, the soul is the piano with many strings” is how painter Wassily Kandinsky put it in 1911. Forms in film also have a rhythm and colors can dance to film music, such as in Mary Ellen Bute’s ABSTRONIC (USA 1952), which shows how sounds move. Evelyn Lambart und Norman McLaren’s hand-painted film BEGONE DULL CARE (Canada 1949) proves that sounds can become audible via colors and forms. Images that play with music on the screen can be seen in EARLY ABSTRACTIONS by Harry Smith (USA 1939–1956). And Bärbel Neubauer’s MONDLICHT (Germany 1997) presents how forms are created in a particular rhythm by scratches on the film strip and disappear again. Following the screening, all the children can paint their own rhythms and take them home with them.

Another event for childre aged 5 and up follows on Sunday October 10, also as part of the Abbas Kiarostami Retrospective. From the beginning of the 70s, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami worked for the film department of the newly founded “Kanoon” in Tehran, an institute for the intellectual development of children and young people. Here he shot short films for children and young people, including educational films and fiction works using motifs from their everyday surroundings. The film TWO SOLUTIONS FOR ONE PROBLEM (1975) conveys how children resolve conflicts in humorous, but also instructive fashion. COLOURS (1976) goes cheerfully looking for colors in real life. SO CAN I (1975) places a focus on the movements of animals and people: can you jump like a kangaroo, crawl like a caterpillar, and climb like an ape? Kiarostami’s first short THE BREAD AND ALLEY (1970) accompanies a little boy on his way back home from the bakery. Without dialogue, the black-and-white film is the story of the test of courage that the little boy must pass in the alley. (sts) The film program will be accompanied by a spoken translation.