Color design, lighting, composition, mood, subject: Painting – the works themselves, images, sketches, and the people that create them – has always been and continues to be a point of reference for filmmakers, cinematographers, scriptwriters and not least production designers. Using film to breathe movement into motionless pictorial art provides the visual worlds of the original artworks with new contexts and paves the way for a whole range of different semantic and perceptional shifts. Grappling with aspects of the lives and creative processes of artists and stylistic movements in cinematic terms opens up new perspectives on art history as an echo chamber for the production of film images. The Magical History Tour is showing examples of the productive relationship between painting and film that span nine decades.

Together with Filmgalerie 451, we are publishing two new DVDs that include comprehensive booklets. These both present the films of Klaus Telscher, which were published in collaboration with the European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, and the state theatre films by Daniel Kötter and Constanze Fischbeck.

The analogue film prints of Arsenal's archive have a new home. Since the beginning of November, they have been at the silent green Kulturquartier, a space for events and exhibitions in the listed premises of a former crematorium in Wedding. The move was made possible by private sponsorship and not only enables better storage for about 10,000 prints but also facilitates the creation of a living archive that takes into account production of knowledge and contemporary reception in connection with digitalization and restoration projects. The archive will open up new possibilities for research, work, experiments and exhibitions to complement what the two cinemas on Potsdamer Platz already do. We warmly welcome you to the official opening in spring 2016.