On July 1, Sweden will assume the Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The Swedish Embassy takes this as an occasion to organize several cultural programs. At Arsenal, a marathon will take place on June 30 – more than 24 hours traversing Swedish film history – moderated by film journalist and Radio EINS presenter Knut Elstermann. But we will already start off on June 27 & 28 with elevator music at the Filmhaus. From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Anna Svensdotter (flute) and Thomas Jäderlund (saxophone) will accompany the elevator guests from the bottom to top floor (and back again).
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.
Film Dialogs: REQUIEM
This marks the start of the series "Film Dialogs", which on a two-monthly basis invites filmmakers to talk about one of the films presented in the exhibition spaces of the Museum für Film und Fernsehen, followed by a screening. Director Hans-Christian Schmid and set designer Christian M. Goldbeck will talk about their work on REQUIEM (D 2006, June 18). Based on a real case that was put on record in a small Franconian town in 1970, the film deals with Christian fundamentalism and bigotry. While studying, a young woman from a strict Catholic family gets into an identity crisis that turns into religious delusion. With this award-winning film, Schmid succeeded, in aesthetic terms as well, in reconstructing the West German provincial climate of the 1970s. (Anke Hahn)
Rising Stars, Falling Stars
NORRTULLSLIGAN (The Norrtull Gang) belongs among the most courageous and enjoyable films of the European decade. The intertitles are reflecting a person’s thoughts and memories. The four who make up the "gang" take city life in their stride. One loses her job after campaigning for strike action at the office. Another resigns after the boss has flirted with her once too often. Followed by drinks in the Red Foyer. (29.6.)
Premiere SUPER ART MARKET
The most recent film marketed by Arsenal distribution is Zoran Solomun's SUPER ART MARKET (2009), the premiere of which is on June 25 at Arsenal in the presence of the director. The film deals with the marketing of contemporary art, with which more money has been made than ever before from 2002 to 2008. The hunger for modern art at art fairs around the world seemed insatiable. A new money aristocracy speculated with pictures and sculptures as if they were stocks. The true protagonists of this development, however, were gallerists and art dealers. SUPER ART MARKET focuses on five gallerists: Leo König from the USA, Judy Lybke from Deutschland, Lorenz Helbling from China, Mihai Pop from Romania, and Laura Bartlett from England. The end of the shooting coincided with the commencing financial crisis in the summer of 2008 – in autumn of that year, some galleries had already gone bankrupt.
Arabs and Terrorism
The Berlin research program "Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe" (EUME), located at the Wissenschaftskolleg, and the "Zentrum Moderner Orient" present as a Berlin premiere a cinematic research project, the documentary WHAT IS SAID ABOUT ARABS AND TERRORISM (USA 2006) by Bassam Haddad. The film critically examines the Western discourse (especially in the USA under Bush) that implicitly and often also explicitly insinuates a connection between Arabs and "terrorism". It does so by means of interviews with well-known persons from the media, from politics and science, as well as with people in the street. In the edit, the statements from various sides of the ideological divide turn into a sort of dialog. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker Bassam Haddad, moderated by Sinan Antoon, currently EUME Fellow. The event is in English. (June 15)
Exhibiting Film History – A colloquium of the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (18.–20. 6.)
Film museums are concerned with preserving and presenting film history. But how can a museum do justice to the special features of the medium of film with its specific temporal and technical preconditions? How can film be exhibited as both an artistic product and a cultural and historical document, and how should it be contextualized? How do film museums meet the in part contradictory requirements of collecting and preserving, on the one hand, and presenting and conveying, on the other? How do they contribute to film-historical canonizations – and what is their relation to the "fringes" and "undercurrents" of a for the most part nationally oriented presentation of film history?
Art of Mediation (7): Films about films and film restoration
To preserve films means to perform work on the hidden body of an immaterial art. The DVD, in particular, has drawn attention to this special form of dealing with cinema: A real standard for reproduction reports has been developed for reissues that can convey the basics of chemical-mechanical prerequisites, diverse approaches to an archival practice and conflicting attitudes to the history of film. Martin Koerber of the Deutsche Kinemathek will address the broad range of topics relevant to restoration. Afterwards, the film PABST WIEDER SEHEN (D 1997) by Jacobsen, Koerber and Perraudin will be shown, which, based on concrete examples of the work of G.W. Pabst, demonstrates the most important aspects of film restoration.
FilmDokument
Under the direction of the architect Richard Paulick, a "film committee for construction and settlement" in 1926 produces the cultural film series WIE WOHNEN WIR GESUND UND WIRTSCHAFTLICH? (HOW DO WE LIVE HEALTHY AND ECONOMICALLY?) . It decries the housing shortage in large cities and points to alternatives such as settlement buildings and Walter Gropius' residential building in Dessau. DAS BAUHAUS UND SEINE BAUWEISE (1926) presents the rational building methods applied in the settlement Dessau-Törten. Spots advertise for free homeownership through home purchase savings, for furniture made by the reform workshops of Gildenhall and for hygiene in everyday life. Informational films on the "Frankfurt kitchen" and the Haarer kitchen demonstrate how the work of the housewife can be optimized. In 1930 Slatan Dudow states that the housing situation of workers is a problem of time that can only be solved politically.
An event of CineGraph Babelsberg with the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and the Deutsche Kinemathek. In cooperation with Medienzentrum Frankfurt e.V. Introduction: Jeanpaul Goergen (June 8)
HELLO GOODBYE
We are very delighted to be able to comply to the request of many visitors to repeat the French film HELLO GOODBYE (Graham Guit, Frankreich 2008/June.6.), which was entirely sold out during the Berlin Jewish Film Festival. This wonderful comedy sheds light on the question of Jewish identity from all sides. In search of their Jewish roots, Gisèle and Alain (Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu) move to Israel. But after just a few weeks in their new homeland, the first problems arise. When Alain loses his job, both suddenly belong to all the moneyless immigrants who are not fully able to speak Hebrew. In addition to the two French stars Ardant and Depardieu, the Israeli actors Lior Ashkenazi, as a young rabbi, and Sasson Gabai, as a policeman, give brilliant performances.