After light enters the eye, quite complex processes follow to result in a meaningful impression. In a program entitled "The Visual Field", Karola Schlegelmilch will present films that investigate the act of seeing as the intersection between the mental and external world, as an individual, active interaction on Febraury 8. This happens, for example, through interventions in the frame, which manipulate the visual impressions by transferring an inner attitude through guiding the camera over the motif. Seeing is also reflected as a border with the other. The program was inspired by perception-based psychological research.

In 2015, the project "Visionary Archive" was launched as part of Forum Expanded, a collaborative translocal experiment on phases and facets of African cinema. Based on this year’s Forum Expanded theme "Traversing the Phantasm" seven presentations focus on the question on how the encounter with archives generates or questions phantasms. Films and videos which were found, believed lost, disintegrated, never completed, or produced in a state of emergency are the theme of each presentations.

Each year the Forum Expanded selection is made from a specific perspective. This year’s theme is: "Traversing the Phantasm." The program sees the artistic experimental film as a form of traversing real and imaginary territories, which are manifest in both (geo-)political realities and fantastic constellations, often as a symptom of capitalist consumer societies. Based on ideas of theorist Jacques Lacan, the concept of the phantasm is reflected in manifold ways. As part of our Think Film panel series art critic Helmut Draxler will introduce this year's theme in a keynote lecture on February 13.

We are presenting a trip to somewhere else with five experimental films without dialogue for children and adults aged 7 plus on February 28: In THE SPIRIT OF THE NAVAJO (1966) Mary Jane and Maxine Tsosie – both Navajo – follow the healing ritual of a medicine man, from gathering herbs in the wilderness, to "painting" a sand mandala to treating patients. NAVAJO RAIN CHANT (1971) is a tiny brightly-colored animation film that lasts as long as the chant that summons the rain. VALENTIN DE LAS SIERRAS (1968) was filmed by Bruce Baillie in Mexico with a blind singer and ball-playing children. In TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND (1975) the associative montage of found footage takes us on a journey to dreamland. And finally Richard Serra plays catch with his hand (HAND CATCHING LEAD, 1968).

We are very happy to be publishing a magazine for the first time this year, which is intended to function as a looser way of getting to know the programme and the ideas behind it, providing supplementary information to both the programme brochure and the Forum film sheets available on our website. The magazine is not about attempting to show the whole picture or supplying the same pieces of information for each film, but rather about giving some spontaneous impressions of the wealth of references that came to mind during the selection process. The print magazine contains relevant images, interviews, background texts, a list of reference films, a far-reaching director’s statement and even some poems, with selected translations of these available on our website. To make your reading experience easier, you will find QR codes and the web addresses of all the available translations in the magazine itself so that you can decide which version you’d prefer to leaf through.