Cinema Archive Detail

December 2015
Filmmakers' Choice in memory of Chantal Akerman
For the short film day on the shortest day of the year, on December 21 filmmaker and curator Maike Mia Höhne presents a program dedicated to filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), who died recently. We never met. Her work was already with me. Now she's gone. "Go into the light", sings Almut Klotz, "and don't get lost while you do – go into the light and be free."
December 2015
Filmmakers' Choice
December 2015
Classics Not Just for Children
December 2015
Grand Prix for "Ben Zaken" in Belfort
BEN ZAKEN by Efrat Corem has received the main prize at the ENTREVUES Festival in Belfort. The film from this year's Forum program is a precise milieu study set on the margins of Israeli society. It tells of Shlomi, who lives with his daughter, brother and mother on a run-down social housing estate and is increasingly overwhelmed by his arduous everyday life.
December 2015
New edition release: 3D Blu-ray Ken Jacobs
A new 3D Blu-ray that brings together three films by Ken Jacobs can be purchased at the Arsenal box office. It includes A PRIMER IN SKY SOCIALISM (Forum Expanded 2014), THE GUESTS (Forum 2014) and BLANKETS FOR INDIANS (2012).
December 2015
"Cinema: A Public Affair"
What are films and the cinema capable of accomplishing in the best case? Who can answer this complex question more beautifully and wisely than Naum Kleiman? The Russian film historian and curator of the legendary Eisenstein Archive was director of the Moscow Film Museum, which was closed in 2005. The Moscow Film Museum – Kleiman and the Friends of the Museum – continued working in exile however, against all resistance. CINEMA: A PUBLIC AFFAIR reconstructs the events leading up to the summer of 2014, when Kleiman was scandalously dismissed. "Cinema has the ability to turn people into citizens." Only a few film excerpts are needed to grasp why Kleiman is such an admired film advocate and enthusiast: he knows how to use film as a weapon in the fight for better, more open societies. His understanding of cinema in today's Russia can hardly be surpassed in terms of force and topicality.
On December 6, Arsenal is showing Tatiana Brandrup's documentary which received its world premiere as part of this year's Berlinale Forum. The director and Naum Kleiman will be present.
November 2015
AFRIKAMERA 2015: The Great Lakes –  Contemporary Cinema Cultures in Central Africa
The Central African Great Lake Region is largely known here in Germany for the bloody conflicts in Burundi, Eastern Congo and Ruanda rather than for its burgeoning film scene, which grapples intensively with both the past and the complex social demands of the present.
The eighth edition of the AFRIKAMERA – CURRENT CINEMA FROM AFRICA organized by the charitable cultural organization toucouleur presents a selection of features and documentaries from and about the region around Lake Kivu as its main focus.
November 2015
L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema
At the end of "Los Angeles Plays Itself", Thom Andersen's monumental essay film about the cinematic representation of his hometown, the voiceover commentary turns away from the Hollywood films that largely formed the focus of the preceding minutes: "Another city, another cinema: a city of walkers, a cinema of walking." This is followed by excerpts from Haile Gerima's BUSH MAMA (1975) and Charles Burnett's KILLER OF SHEEP (1978) – examples of "a Neorealist movement in Los Angeles spearheaded by a group of young Black filmmakers from the South". Historically, this movement which Andersen's entire cinematic city history feeds into was known as "L.A. Rebellion". Its starting point can be traced back to the mid-60s onwards at the UCLA Film School, where a group of black students had come together to look for aesthetic and political alternatives not just to Hollywood but also to the standard forms of independent and auteur cinema of the time. The cinema of the L.A. Rebellion emerged on the one hand in direct tandem with the social struggles of those years – the civil rights movement, the Watts riots of 1965 – and on the other based on (critical) engagement with the currents of the national and international avant-gardes.
November 2015
Asynchronous: Documentaries and Experimental Films on the Holocaust from the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art Collection
2015 is dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of National Socialism. For this reason, Arsenal has put together a selection of 46 documentary and experimental films from its collection that not only grapple with the Holocaust but also with such themes as exile and forced labor during the National Socialist era. With the support of the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin, ten films from the project have also been digitized so that they also remain visible for coming generations. These ten films as well as all 36 others are available to cinemas, cultural, and educational institutions for their own programs as well as for school screenings. Part of the project also involved a collaboration with the film studies seminar "Remembering the Holocaust in Cinema" at the Freie Universität Berlin to create an accompanying publication. To bring the project to a close, we are showing a program of eleven films from 1.10 until 9.11.
November 2015
Futurale - Film Festival About The Future of Labor
Automation, digitization, crowdworking, and clickworking are changing our economy at a rapid pace. What effects will they have on the way we work? In order to raise awareness for subject of "Working 4.0", the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has founded the Futurale Film Festival, which will start at Arsenal before touring through 25 German cities from autumn 2015 to winter 2016. Across seven documentaries, the festival illuminates different trends surrounding the future of work. Each screening will be accompanied by a discussion in which audiences can enter into dialogue with experts from the region. Before each of the films, one of the shorts by the directors involved in the comprehensive EINE EINSTELLUNG ZUR ARBEIT project by Harun Farocki und Antje Ehmann will be shown, which were created as a co-production between Harun Farocki Filmproduktion and the Goethe-Institut.

Filmmakers' Choice in memory of Chantal Akerman

Filmmakers' Choice

Classics Not Just for Children

Grand Prix for "Ben Zaken" in Belfort

New edition release: 3D Blu-ray Ken Jacobs

"Cinema: A Public Affair"

AFRIKAMERA 2015: The Great Lakes – Contemporary Cinema Cultures in Central Africa

L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema

Asynchronous: Documentaries and Experimental Films on the Holocaust from the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art Collection

Futurale - Film Festival About The Future of Labor

AFRIKAMERA 2015: The Great Lakes –  Contemporary Cinema Cultures in Central Africa