Forum Expanded Panels

8th Forum Expanded: To Begin with the Archive

Every film that is seen for the first time enters the realm of film history. Curating is archiving and archiving is curating, both in order to provide access to an otherwise unseen world of images. Forum Expanded and the project “Living Archive – Archivel Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice” are two exemplary strategies that understand cinema as an ongoing dialogue between films and audiences.

Screening of POR PRIMERA VEZ by Octavio Cortázar (Cuba 1967, 9 min)
Film-performance and discussion with the Living Archive participants, the Forum Expanded curatorial team and audience
Special guests: Harun Farocki and Wendelien van Oldenborgh (artists expanded)
Further guests: Erika and Ulrich Gregor, Stephan Geene, Angela Melitopoulos, Stephan Pethke and Ala Younis
Friday, 8.2., 3pm Arsenal Cinema 1

The panel is part of the project "Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice“, funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin. The grant program of the project Living Archive is funded by the Goethe-Institut.

Living Archive: What Happened to this City?

Nicole Wolf came across Deepa Dhanraj’s 1986 film Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? (What happened to this city?) during her research on political documentary films in India. A film that at first she only kept hearing about but couldn’t see (Dhanraj’s own 16mm print was in very bad shape) eventually turned out to be part of the Arsenal archive. Two aspects mark the film’s contemporaneity, especially with regard to reflections on representations of violence: the particular quality of the film’s eyewitness accounts and its calm yet pervasive portrayal of ‘living under curfew’.
The screening of the newly digitized film will be followed by a discussion between Nicole Wolf and Deepa Dhanraj, contributing to their ongoing dialogue as part of Nicole Wolf’s “Living Archive” research project.

Panelists: Deepa Dhanraj (Bangalore, Forum 1986), Nicole Wolf (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Friday, 8.2., 5:30pm Arsenal Cinema 1

The panel is part of the project "Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice“, funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin.

Cairo: The City and its Cinema in Transformation

How do you think of cinema in times of political and social transformation? Part of the cultural change in Cairo is the constitution of independent structures for production, presentation, and distribution of film and video, as well as the discovery, display, and analysis of a hidden film history. How can one gather an unwritten film history? How can audiences and filmmakers create their own world of cinema? What does independent really mean? The urgency of these questions is obvious within a revolution, but shouldn’t they be asked everywhere in the world? Four film activists from Cairo talk about their projects, needs, ideas, and their everyday work.

ScreeningofEl Cafeteria (Paul Geday Egypt 1975, 11 min)
Panelists from Cairo, Egypt: Tamer El-Said (Zero Productions and Cimatheque), Hala Lotfy (Hassala Productions, Forum 2013), Hala Galal (SEMAT Production), Paul Geday (filmmaker and curator, Forum Expanded 2012, 2013, artists expanded)
Moderators: Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Forum Expanded curator, Berlin), Marcel Schwierin (curator, Berlin)
Saturday, 9.2., 1pm Kunstgewerbemuseum (use Kulturforum entrance)

Organized with the generous support of the Goethe-Institut Cairo.

Appearing as Such but Not Necessarily So

Panel discussion on apparitions, hauntings, and the immaterial materiality of film. Ghosts, spirits, apparitions, the undead, and disembodied voices make their appearances in the panelists’ works. They embody a crucial element of cinema, a substance of film which often remains unaddressed: the non-verbal, that which uncouples from the screen, voices and images outside and folded into the images that are given to be seen: Creating a non localized space of cinematic experience, re-materializing the immaterial third image and thus raising new questions regarding an aesthetic of cinema.

Panelists: Lucien Castaing-Taylor/Véréna Paravel (Sensory Ethnography Lab, Harvard, Forum 2009, Forum Expanded 2013, artists expanded), Constanze Ruhm (Vienna, Forum Expanded 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013, artists expanded), Philip Scheffner (Berlin, Forum 2007, 2010, 2012).
Moderator: Ute Holl (professor of media studies, Basel)
Sunday, 10.2., 12pm Kunstgewerbemuseum (use Kulturforum entrance)

Por Primera Vez: Cuba’s Cinematic Legacies

A revolution
which doesn’t
revolutionize
(permanently)
Its language
alphabets
gestures
looks
turns in on itself and dies (…)
I say:
‘Release me from the obligation
Of the prologue
Let me speak (I do)
with pan, zoom,
traveling, decibels
Mix, 24 frames
Per second
In my language made of
Projected light.’
In the zoo
in Berlin, in Berlin
I saw, I saw
The green parrot
And the parrot didn’t
See me.
(Fernando Birri)

People in a mountain village get visually alphabetized in 1967, freedom fighters from Guinea-Bissau learn filmmaking in Cuba in the early 1970s, a Canadian film professor gives a workshop in Havana and meets Birri’s sculpture on a field. The films and talks in this program discuss what it means to “learn a film language” in Cuba.

Screeningof
POR PRIMERA VEZ (Octavio Cortazar,Cuba 1967, 9 min, Screenings)
CUBA (Filipa César, France 2012, 10 min, Screenings)
ARTURO (Pilar Alvarez, Cuba 2012, 3 min, Screenings)
LESSONS IN PROCESS (Philip Hoffman, Canada/Cuba 2012, 30 min, Screenings)
as well as excerpts from digitized films from the film archive Guinea-Bissau.
Panelists: Filipa César (Berlin, Forum Expanded 2013), Philip Hoffman (Toronto, Forum Expanded 2009, 2013), Claudia von Alemann (filmmaker, EICT, Cologne/Havanna) Moderator: Florian Zeyfang (Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, Forum Expanded 2013)
Sunday, 10.2., 8pm HAU 2

Moving in Formation

How is the social body choreographed? What forms the link between the subject and the collective? If it is history, the idea of a past as it is conceived by and in the present, then what role does the writing and the arranging of history as such play? How are bodies conceived by history and its reenactments? How does ideology perform both public space and the body of the masses in this space? Ala Younis’ tin soldiers project, Marta Popivoda’s film Yugoslavia – How ideology moved our collective body, as well as the book Public Sphere by Performance, and Sandy Amerio’s film Dragooned serve as exemplary cases to discuss these questions.

Panelists: Ala Younis (Amman, Jordan, artist, writer and curator), Sandy Amerio (Paris, Forum Expanded 2013, artists expanded), Ana Vujanović (Belgrade/Berlin/Paris, Forum Expanded 2013), Marta Popivoda (Belgrade/Berlin, Forum Expanded 2013, artists expanded)
Moderator: Marcel Schwierin (curator, Berlin)
Monday, 11.2., 12pm Kunstgewerbemuseum (use Kulturforum entrance)

Once Every Day

In 1981 Richard Foreman shot Strong Medicine, and would not make another film for over 30 years. His director of photography back then: Babette Mangolte. The two filmmakers will speak about Foreman’s return to the cinema, his film and theater work and their collaborations.

ScreeningofOnce Every Day (Richard Foreman, USA 2012, 64 min, Screenings)
Panelists: Richard Foreman (New York, Forum Expanded 2013, artists expanded)
and Babette Mangolte (New York, Forum Expanded 2013, artists expanded)
Moderator: Anselm Franke (Forum Expanded curator, Berlin)
Monday, 11.2., 8:30pm HAU 1

Quasi-Cinema: Hélio Oiticica
Super 8 Fragments and the Cosmococa Installations

Hélio Oiticica, probably Brazil’s most famous twentieth-century artist, describes the US filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith as the ‘precursor’ of his and Neville D'Almeida's cocaine slideshow environments, the so-called Block-Experiments in Cosmococa - programa in progress. The Cosmococas indeed give an impressive panorama of the unknown sides of Oiticica's 1970s oeuvre, that relies as much on conrete poetry as it does on Brazil's Cinema Marginal movement and New York's queer underground scene.
Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz will present a selection of unedited Super8 fragments of Oiticica, including footage of Neville D'Almeida and Andreas Valetin, in dialogue with art historian Sabeth Buchmann's discussion of Hélio Oitica's concept of Quasi-Cinema, including Block-Experiments in Cosmococa - programa in progress.

Panelists: Neville D'Almeida (filmmaker, Rio de Janeiro, artists expanded), Cesar Oiticica Filho (Rio de Janeiro, Forum 2013,main program), Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz (cultural critic, Berlin), Sabeth Buchmann (Vienna/Berlin, Academy of Fine Arts)
Moderator: Marc Siegel (Berlin/Frankfurt Goethe-University)
Tuesday, 12.2., 12pm Kunstgewerbemuseum (use Kulturforum entrance)

Of Sense Performance Gestures and Their Impact on Documentary Filmmaking

Uncertainty is a key characteristic of modern society. Therefore, many contemporary film and video works provide even more visual uncertainties in order to create possibilities of forming new concepts. Performativity is one of them, which allows for the acting out of memories, imaginations, realities, and therefore ambiguity. Furthermore, these works are capable of converting history, touching current society, hypothesizing future, and even expressing the universal fable of life, while not suffering from constraints of real-life subject matter. They allow the coexistence of multiple meanings and break the conventional aesthetic theory that arts must be consistent in meanings and contents. This panel will cast a glance at the different conceptions of performativity in documentary filmmaking.

Panelists: Forum Expanded 2013 artists Nina Fischer/Maroan el Sani (Berlin, artists expanded), James T. Hong (Taipei, artists expanded), J.P. Sniadecki (Cambrige, USA, artists expanded), Huang Xiang (Songzhuang, artists expanded), Xu Ruotao (Songzhuang, artists expanded)
Moderator: Bettina Steinbrügge (Forum Expanded, curator)
Wednesday, 13.2., 12:30pm Kunstgewerbemuseum (use Kulturforum entrance)

Working Title: New Perspectives on Film/Art Funding

Over its first 8 years, Forum Expanded has shown that concepts such as 'experimental film', 'independent film', 'artists film', 'art film', or 'gallery film' are simply not sufficient when it comes to describing the new, increasingly open approaches to film and video production beyond the basic film/art dichotomy. Whether single screen projections or installations, contemporary cinematic works discover radical new paths for creating critical aesthetic languages. Yet the institutional framework is still split. New funding ideas are needed to support artists and filmmakers who take risks by working in a field that largely remains undefined.

Panelists: Caroline Kirberg (jucca film, Berlin), Olivier Marboeuf (Khiasma, Les Lilas, Paris), Lior Shamriz (Berlin, Forum Expanded 2010, 2013, artists expanded), Tobias Pausinger (IFFR CineMart), Susanne Schmitt (MEDIA Antenne Berlin-Brandenburg), Teresa Höfert de Turegano (Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg), Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Forum Expanded curator, Berlin)
Moderator: Nanna Heidenreich (Forum Expanded curator, Berlin/Braunschweig)
Thursday, 14.2., 12pm Arsenal Cinema 1

Organized in cooperation with Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and MEDIA Antenne Berlin-Brandenburg.