Arsenal will host the Asian Women's Film Festival (AWFF) for the second time from October 15 through 20. We will present around forty films by female filmmakers from a number of Asian countries. The program additionally includes films from the Asian Diaspora in the United States, Canada and Europe. The AWFF is organized by ASIA UNLIMITED e.V. – an intercultural event platform focusing on Asia.
A Silent Cinema – Highlights of Syrian Cinema
Syrian cinema is fairly unknown, both in Germany and in the Arab world. With an average production of just two films a year, Syria doesn't come close to the mass production in Egypt, the best-known Arab cinema country. Syrian cinema is characterized by its distinct auteur orientation. Moreover, it is astoundingly critical and political. In view of the authoritarian character of the Syrian state, this may come as a surprise, yet the reason for this lies in the peculiarity of Syrian cinematic language. Similar to Iran, an idiosyncratic, strongly symbolic visual language rich in metaphors has evolved in Syria, as well, through which it is possible to criticize the regime.
LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World
From Oct. 28 through Nov. 11, we will present the event "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World", our first major cooperation with HAU/Hebbel am Ufer. With performances, films and videos, slide presentations, exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and discussions, we look at the gender-bending and genre-breaking works of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and other avant-garde artists of the 1960s, from a number of angles. The work of Jack Smith is juxtaposed with recent works of numerous international contemporary artists. A special guest is the legendary drag performer and underground superstar Mario Montez, who on this occasion will appear in public for the first time in thirty years.
LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! - Five Flaming Days in a Rented World
New Films and Performances - Over 50 International Guests - Superstar Mario Montez Live!
From October 28- November 1 2009 Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) present "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World", a monumental event that brings together over fifty international artists and scholars to pay homage to the pioneering American underground artist and queer icon Jack Smith twenty years after his death from AIDS.
Focus on Potsdamer Platz
Center of a metropolis, ruined landscape, Berlin Wall, no-man's-land, huge construction site, tourist attraction: the past 100 years of history have left their mark on Potsdamer Platz. From Thursdays through Sundays at five pm, we'll be screening films that, through the variety in their aesthetics and content, are atmospherically dense descriptions of a city caught in the vicissitudes of history.
Farewell to Hartmut Bitomsky
When Hartmut Bitomsky returned from the United States to Berlin to take on the position of director of the German Film and Television Academy (dffb), Arsenal greeted him with a retrospective of his films. The Filmhaus (Arsenal, Deutsche Kinemathek and dffb) now says farewell to Bitomsky, who will leave the dffb for health reasons. On this occasion, the media scholar Dietrich Leder will talk about Bitomsky's films and texts. Bitomsky wrote about the film of the evening, JACKSON COUNTY JAIL (Michael Miller, USA 1976): "Each shot is taken with an eye for reality, and reality is shot with an eye for cinema. The film is edited like crazy, hell for leather. People were at work here without ulterior motives. They are as hard-boiled and mean as the story they came up with." We are looking forward to greeting Hartmut Bitomsky as well as Barbara Kisseler (Head of the Senate Chancellery) and Christian Petzold. (Bodo Knapheide) (Sept. 26)
FilmDokument: Exhibition "Die Technische Stadt" 1928
The exhibition "Die Technische Stadt" that took place in Dresden in summer of 1928 uses the example of a modern city to show how technology has an impact on people's lives. The technological body of the city is exhibited, its organism: electricity, gas, water, traffic and communication, police and fire department. The program bundles all preserved films and film fragments of the ambitious show. The sensation of the exhibition was DAS ERSTE KUGELHAUS DER WELT [The World's First Spherical House] (1928). DAS STAHLRAHMENHAUS DER STAHLBAU-GMBH DÜSSELDORF [The Steel Frame House of Stahlbau-GmbH Düsseldorf] (1928) also caused a stir. In addition, we will show the advertising film about the ZEITGEMÄSSE HAUSHALT [Contemporary Household] (1930) as well as the first documentary on Berlin's Radio Tower as DAS NEUE WAHRZEICHEN BERLINS [Berlins New Landmark] (1928).
Kino Polska
Kino Polska will screen two films by Andrzej Wajda: The story line of his masterpiece POPIÓL I DIAMENT (Ashes and Diamonds, Poland 1958, Sept. 22) unfolds between May 7 and 8, 1945. A resistance fighter is to murder a communist functionary. But he mistakes his victim with someone else and kills another man. "Within this classical unity of time and place, Wajda symbolically narrates the immediate postwar history as a continuation of the Polish tragedy." (Filmarchiv Austria) The film was highly acclaimed worldwide and made the leading actor Zbigniew Cybulski a star.
THE TRUE GLORY – Documentary film on the Second World War
From September 24 to 26, the Deutsche Kinemathek in the Filmhaus will organize the conference "The Camera as Weapon – Propaganda Images of the Second World War>". It focuses on photos and film recordings of German "propaganda companies" that until today shape the memory of this war.
Vaginal Davis presents Rising Stars, Falling Stars
Vaginal Davis, performer and expert on 1920s cinema, is back with her legendary series. The new season starts with STRIKE (1924) by Sergei Eisenstein. The film depicts a strike by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia and their subsequent suppression. Eisenstein's influential essay "Montage of Attractions" was written between STRIKE'S production and premiere. Accompagnied with a live music performance by John and Tim Blue and followed by a reception in the Red Foyer, hosted by Ms. Davis.