Cinema Archive Detail

December 2014
Filmmakers' Choice: "Wonderfully rescued by the forces of good..."
On December 21 Maike Mia Höhne is presenting another programme as part of our monthly series Filmmakers' Choice.
"Wonderfully rescued by the forces of good, we confidently await what may come". Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this poem in December 1944 in prison, faced with a finality that he met with generosity and hope. It is a chain of emotional associations that provides the framework for this evening: solitude, hope, power, necessity, calmness, light. From the abstraction of light and rhythm in ABSTRONIC (M.E. Bute, USA 1952/54) via the poem and the question of sorting memory in COLOUR POEMS (M. Tait, United Kingdom 1974), to the uncle's village in A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE (A. Weerasethakul, Thailand/United Kingdom/Germany 2009), that stands for the Thai army's hunt for communists from 1960–80. Peter Weiss shot STUDIE IV – BEFREIUNG (Sweden 1954), the title is the program here. In all this destruction, the light of world remains – therefore once again Karl Kels' STARE (Germay 1991), that expands the sky via movement.
December 2014
45th Berlinale Forum
The 45th edition of the Berlinale Forum will take place from February 5-15, 2015.
The deadline for film entry has passed. The programme will be announced in January 2015.
December 2014
Cinema release "The Second Game"
arsenal distribution is releasing THE SECOND GAME (AL DOILEA JOC) by Corneliu Porumboiu from December 4.
In the film, which premiered as part of this year's Forum programme, the director and his father watch a football match from the winter of 1988 which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television footage in real time: grainy video images, political pressure, historical insights, driving snow.
November 2014
Within the Time Continuum – The Films of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro
Portugal has an incredibly rich film culture – you only have to think of Manoel de Oliveira, Paulo Rocha, João César Monteiro, Pedro Costa, João Pedro Rodrigues and Miguel Gomes. Yet another name is equally deserving of inclusion on this list: António Reis (1927–1991), who was an important colleague, teacher and mentor for all the above and had a huge influence on the development of Portuguese cinema following the Carnation Revolution as well as on the young generation of filmmakers that followed. Revered in his homeland, yet almost unknown outside of Portugal, the films of António Reis (1927-1991) were made in the 70s and 80s in collaboration with his wife Margarida Cordeiro (*1939) and are regarded as milestones in both Portuguese and international film history. We are very happy to be able to present the four works by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro in restored prints, works unusual in both form and content that have unjustly faded into comparative obscurity. We are also showing a film by Manoel de Oliveira that Reis assisted on. Vítor Gonçalves, a filmmaker and professor at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema in Lisbon, where he himself studied under António Reis, will be our guest at the opening weekend and give an introduction to the oeuvre of Reis/Cordeiro.
November 2014
AFRIKAMERA Presents: RE_IMAGING AFRICA 2014
In collaboration with the Partnership with Africa e.V., AFRIKAMERA presents RE_IMAGING AFRICA, which is taking place simultaneously in Berlin and Kassel in November 2014, showing a selection of current productions from Africa and bringing together filmmakers, lecturers and students from Germany and African countries in a series of workshops.
November 2014
P.S. Pre-Code – Let's Misbehave!
Three further films in which we celebrate the wild pre-Code period! In mid 1934, the Hollywood studios introduced the Hays Code, a far-reaching form of self-censorship that regulated moral behavior above all. In the years before, subjects such as sex, drugs, crime and alcohol could be explored relatively freely. This was supplemented by a clear proximity to reality and an often raw, unvarnished vitality that set itself apart from the smooth perfection of the late classical Hollywood era. Women were independent and self-confident and approached life pragmatically and without illusions much like their male counterparts.
November 2014
Magical History Tour: Of Forms and Figures – Choreographies in Film
In anticipation of our program focus in December – musicals! – we are already picking up on the subject of choreographies in film in this month's Magical History Tour. Even though the entirely choreographed arrangements of the musical genre could easily form the central examples for this film historical film series, we are for the time being concentrating on the sort of film choreographies that are only obvious at second glance and move far beyond just song and dance: precisely arranged figures, objects and gestures within the cinematic space as well as exactly orchestrated tracking shots, plot strands and montages in film. With a few exceptions, these choreographies are not actually danced but still have the character of dance, generating rhythms and abstraction, stylizing narratives, creating complex visual spaces and relationship entanglements and reflecting both the stationary and the moving – a cinema that could not be more physical, a cinema of highly accentuated, densely constructed units of staging, which we follow in eleven films.
November 2014
Vaginal Davis Presents Rising Stars, Falling Stars – We Must Have Music!
On November 30, our archivist Vaginal Davis presents EL TANGO ES UNA HISTORIA (Tango is a Story, Mexico 1983): Humberto Rios originally only wanted to document the first tango festival to take place in his home in exile of Mexico in June 1980 and above all the three most famous representatives of tango music who appeared there: Osvaldo Pugliese, the old master, Astor Piazzolla, the renewer, and Susana Rinaldi, the most vehement voice in tango. But the political events in the military run Argentina did not just influence the artists’ performances but also the film itself.
November 2014
ONE WORLD BERLIN
In 2014, the ONE WORLD BERLIN Human Rights Film Festival is taking place for the tenth time. Four programs will be shown from November 20-23, with directors, human rights activists and experts accompanying the program with discussions.
1971 by Johanna Hamilton opens the festival on 20.11. From the start of the 70s, FBI informants and provocateurs were more and more in attendance at anti-war protests, with the idea being to discredit and undermine the movement. The "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI" stole the complete set of files to this end from a regional office in Media, Pennsylvania and made these available for journalists. This revealed that the FBI allowed itself to be abused for the unconstitutional surveillance of those who think differently. Over 40 years later, the predecessors of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden now break their silence about the events there.
November 2014
Bohumil Hrabal: Writer – Czech – Central European
Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) is one of the most important Czech writers of the 20th century. His grotesque, tragicomic, subversive novels and poems did not just achieve international acclaim, but were also and are a source of inspiration for Czech filmmakers. To coincide with the "Wer ich bin. Bohumil Hrabal: Schriftsteller – Tscheche – Mitteleuropäer" exhibition at the Literaturhaus on Fasanenstraße, we are presenting three Hrabal adaptations.

Filmmakers' Choice: "Wonderfully rescued by the forces of good..."

45th Berlinale Forum

Cinema release "The Second Game"

Within the Time Continuum – The Films of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro

AFRIKAMERA Presents: RE_IMAGING AFRICA 2014

P.S. Pre-Code – Let's Misbehave!

Magical History Tour: Of Forms and Figures – Choreographies in Film

Vaginal Davis Presents Rising Stars, Falling Stars – We Must Have Music!

ONE WORLD BERLIN

Bohumil Hrabal: Writer – Czech – Central European