On a hill on the edge of a Romanian district capital there lies a village, although you’d never guess that it’s so close to a town. The streets are unpaved, a horse and cart is used to get around and the fields are tilled with a scythe. The Roma here live in tune with nature and harvest whatever the land currently offer. One thing they always need is wood for heating. Yet surviving in the present day has become increasingly difficult. Apart from the annual potato harvest, there is scarcely any paid work for unskilled labourers any more, not even in the wider region. Future prospects are equally bleak according to village head Aron, for without money one has no voice in politics. Strong group ties, mutual respect and unwavering faith do at least provide some compensation.

The steady hands of Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain succeed in capturing the lives of this oft-scorned and vilified people with extraordinary depth and complexity. It is as if one is on hand to experience the changing seasons with them, pulled into the flow of this family community. (Claudius Lünstedt, Forum Catalogue)

2015 is dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust – a subject that is of particular significance for our institution, given that the cinematic engagement with the Holocaust has formed a key concern of our work since the very foundation of our association in 1963, then called the Friends of the German Film Archive. This is still apparent to this day, whether in our cinema program, that of the Berlinale Forum, or in our arsenal distribution portfolio. One of the most prominent events at the 1986 Forum was thus the German premiere of Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH at the Delphi-Filmpalast, a film that has since formed part of our distribution range. Additional films on the same theme shown at the Forum and subsequently added to our film archive include DIE FEUERPROBE by Erwin Leiser, HABEHIRA VEHAGORAL (Choice and Destiny) by Tsipi Reibenbach or Lanzmann's SOBIBOR, 14 OCTOBRE 1943, 16 HEURES. These special audiovisual documents of their times are in danger of fading into obscurity. On the one hand, the film print stock is under threat from both decay and wear and tear, while the media shift of recent years on the other means that there are fewer and fewer places capable of screening analogue films. In order to ensure this form of cinematic remembrance also remains accessible for coming generations, a selection of around 50 titles from our film collection has been put together, 10 of which will be digitalized or, if already available in digital form, acquired for digital projection over the next 10 months. The selection includes both well-known films as well as those that have received less attention or been undeservedly forgotten. A catalogue of the thematically relevant works from our collection is now available to present and contextualize the films in question. Until February 4 2015, a comprehensive film series including introductions to the films, Q&As, and discussions is taking place at the Arsenal cinema to mark the start of the project. The focus is on questions of memory, archives, and public spheres. All the films are available for nationwide screenings via arsenal distribution.

In February, we are continuing and closing the "Susan Sontag Revisited" program curated by Ralph Eue. Who was Susan Sontag? An essayist and writer, cosmopolitain and human rights activist, an icon who thought outside the box and could see the bigger picture. She combined intellect, glamour and dissent effortlessly.

She wanted everything and she wanted it all at the same time: A wild life, political commitment, to think, to write, to provoke, to get involved, and last but not least to make films. She was an international director whose films were made between 1969 and 1993, in Sweden, France, Britain, Israel, Italy and Bosnia.

Recent Latin American cinema is a major focus of the 2015 Forum. Films from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico explore institutional, political and family-related violence and depict people who seek individual answers to social upheavals.

Forum Expanded is 10 years old. What began in 2006 with 11 works is now a firm component of the Berlinale, featuring 40 works in 2015. This year, Forum Expanded is not only presenting the group exhibition on the premises of the Akademie der Künste in Hanseatenweg, but also the complete film program, as well as performances and debates. Thus, the historical link between the art institution and the Berlinale is being highlighted: The Akademie was one of the venues where Forum films were screened until 1999 and is therefore a resonant environment for the interaction between the Forum and Forum Expanded.

Montage is one of cinema's most important causal instruments of style and so elementary that its significance is easily forgotten. Montage gives structure to space and time, creates continuities and breaks and can have a dynamic and rhythmic effect. The Soviet avant-garde filmmakers were quick to recognize and explore the value of montage. However, the film language that was so seminal and continues to shape our watching habits today was developed in Hollywood - découpage classique, which evokes a flowing continuity of movement. The editing is as unobtrusive as possible and gives the impression of a light and effortless, seamless narrative. Russian avant-garde cinema of the 1920s places far less importance on organic assembly than on contradictions and contrasts. Dialectical montage, comprised of opposing and associative shots, has a jolting effect on the viewer. The juxtaposition of two shots creates a completely new coherent unity. Later, the various new waves of the 1960s set out to shake up the rules of classical montage.

After their screening in the Berlinale Forum, we will show three newly-restored films by the Japanese director Kon Ichikawa as DCP at the Arsenal. In the course of his long career that began in the mid-1930s, Kon Ichikawa (1915–2008) made over 80 films - the last was made in 2006 when he was 90 years old. In 1956, The Burmese Harp won him an award at the Venice Film Festival and acclaim in the West. His oeuvre cannot be pigeon-holed, so different were his films, encompassing many genres and styles and ranging from social satire, comedy, documentary and war movie to extravagant costume drama. The screenplays were often written by Natto Wada, his wife. Personal projects alternated with commissioned works and Ichikawa himself divided his films into “light” and “dark” categories. His ironic perspective of Japanese post-war culture is unique. Tormented characters driven to extreme acts are often at the center of his films.

Flora Gomes’ sensational feature film debut "Mortu Nega" (1988) was long considered considered the beginning of cinema in Guinea-Bissau, and the director has remained one of the industry's most important actors. His early work as a documentarist of the Guinean liberation struggle is less known - it is a collective film oeuvre interwoven with the decolonization process that has come back into focus thanks to Arsenal's "Visionary Archive" project. (Forum Expanded panel at the Berlinale on 11.2).

The cinema evening on 17.2 gives an opportunity to see and discuss two films with Flora Gomes: his feature film PO DI SANGUI (1996) about an exodus from a drought-threatened village community, and the last film by the Senegalese visionary of cinema Djibril Diop Mambéty - LA PETITE VENDEUSE DE SOLEIL (1999).