A new periodical dedicated to film in all its current manifestations: in cinema, on DVD, in art, on the Internet, in intellectual debates, and in pointed references. CARGO mediates between theory and attraction, persons and global interrelations. On March 5 the first issue of CARGO Film / Medien / Kultur will be presented accompanied by the screening of WHITE DOG (USA 1982) by Samuel Fuller. "A film about the retraining of a snappy dog. Because racism is the product of conditioning, the intentional transformation of fear into hate, and because Fuller conveys this insight, without transforming fear into hate, WHITE DOG is the highly peculiar example of a film on racism without racists." (Rainer Knepperges) In the presence of Ekkehard Knörer, Bert Rebhandl, Simon Rothöhler, and Erik Stein.
Rising Stars, Falling Stars
Vaginal Davis, performer and expert on 1920s cinema, presents KURUTTA IPPEIJI (A Page of Madness, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan 1926) within the frame of her series. It is a product of the group shinkankakuha that attempted to counter naturalistic forms of representation. A former seaman works in a mental home unnoticed to be with his wife who has gone insane. The film culminates in hallucinatory sequences in which we experience from inside the patients how the real world dissolves in fear and insanity. On the piano: Eunice Martins. Afterwards drinks with Ms. Davis in the Rote Foyer. (March 14)
MaerzMusik presents
Parallel to musique concrète in Paris and Elektronische Musik in Cologne, Music for Tape, or also Tape Music, evolved in the United States at the end of the 1940s. The first known studies on the creative use of tape including simple electronic sound generation is from Louis and Bebe Barron, among others. John Cage also worked in the studio of the Barrons. In 1951 he founded the "Music for Magnetic Tape Project" with Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Christian Wolff. They conducted experiments in recording electronic and natural sounds and combined them with instrumental music, dance and fine arts. The presentation of MaerzMusik features some of the most interesting compositions and documentations of this project. (March 28, introduction by Volker Straebel)
An event of MaerzMusik in cooperation with the Elektronische Studio of TU Berlin – Faculty Audio-communication.
Conference Literature and Film
Under the title "Literature and Film: Concentrated Dialogs. From the German Empire to Exile", a conference organized by Fabienne Liptay and Stefan Keppler (Free University Berlin and Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich) from March 26 to 28 examines the diverse relationships between film and literature. The start is made on March 26 at Arsenal with a lecture by Thomas Koebner (Munich): "Bourgeois Satire Between Literature and Film – Using the Example of 'Die Hose', Director: Hans Behrendt, after Motives of the Drama by Carl Sternheim". Afterwards DIE HOSE (A Royal Scandal, Hans Behrendt, D 1927, on the piano: Eunice Martins, March 26) will be screened. The satire on hypocrisy and subservience in a German residence city prior to 1914 caricatures the escapade of an official's wife triggered by a ridiculous mishap. Afterwards, drinks will be served in the foyer.
The Art of Mediation (4): Experiment Film and Art Spaces
The adoption of cinematic models, often out of an impulse to do research, has a long tradition in experimental films. For quite a while now, one can find installations working with found footage and tying in with this tradition in galleries and museums as well. Not all these works are films about films, but where the editing is directed toward content-related motifs or shots typical of a genre, one can learn something about cinema in the space of art as well. In the program with Dirk Schaefer, who has done sound design for works by Peter Tscherkassky, Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet and edited films of his own, parts of this tradition of hidden films about films will be discussed. "The Art of Mediation", a project by Entuziazm e.V., is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal Agency for Civic Education. (March 27)
zweitausendeins and SPEX present
"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire." That's the summarizing statement of the Slovenian cultural philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek in Sophie Fiennes' film THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA (2006), a fascinating journey through the world of cinema. Žižek, who appears as a main actor in the film sets and locations, uses films such as The Exorcist, Fight Club, Solaris and The Birds to analyze the hidden language of cinema and how it influences our reality, imagination and desire. On the occasion of the DVD publication of the film by zweitausendeins, SPEX and zweitausendeins present THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA in the presence of Slavoj Žižek and Sophie Fiennes. (March 6)
Tribute to Ann Savage
On December 25, 2008, the actress Ann Savage died at the age of 87. She became famous for playing numerous femme fatales in B- to Z-movies in the 1940s and 50s, particularly for her role in Edgar G. Ulmer's film noir DETOUR. After no longer appearing on screen for decades, Guy Maddin succeeded in winning her for the role of the mother in his film MY WINNIPEG, presented at last year's Forum.
It's Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But The Situation in Which He Lives: Art, Cinema, Context Now – a Program by Ian White
Curatorial work in film and video has changed considerably over the years. Films can now be screened almost anywhere, placing the practice of curating before new challenges.
Magical History Tour - American Mythmaking and British (Color) Opulence
We continue our journey through American genre history - with westerns, film noir and melodramas from the 1940s and 50s, the age of classical Hollywood cinema. John Ford's name is inseparably connected to the American western movie. Like hardly anyone else, he shaped this archetypical American genre and during the five decades of his career as a director, he developed it further, creating archetypes and legends. Georg Seeßlen called John Ford, who in his late movies critically addressed this production of myths, the "greatest myth poet of American cinema."
fake or feint
… is a seven-month exhibition project on Alexanderplatz, the five shows of which deal with the politics of surface and marking as intervention. In various ways, the artists examine forms of marking in fields such as urban space, gender politics, the staging of bodies, club culture, and language. The film program curated by Elena Zanichelli and Jörg Franzbecker expands the frame of the exhibition by video works, feature films and shorts, which visualize the constructedness of these forms. The focus is on markings as they can be created by tactically employed moments of disruption, alienation and narrative breaks. The contributions show, among other things, the indefiniteness in the desire of the characters (March 9); they play with irritations and feints (March 16); vacillate between recent practices of re-enactments of scenes from the history of film and earlier reactions to Hollywood’s illusionism (March 23).