Film festivals have two main functions: discovering new films and providing an opportunity for filmmakers, curators, critics and audiences to get together to debate the discoveries in question. The "Arab Shorts" festival took place from 2009-2011, organized by the Goethe Institute Cairo and headed by artistic director Marcel Schwierin, and successfully showed both the ongoing significance of these two tenets and the fact they should still not be taken for granted. Curators from Arab countries were invited to present short film programs in Cairo. A wealth of independent works from the Arab world was presented, which had seldom been seen in such compact form.

We were convinced that the "Arab Shorts" should be seen and discussed beyond the festival in Cairo and thus selected several curated programs and individual works. In collaboration with the Goethe Institute Cairo and thanks to their generous support, we were thus able to add a total of 61 works to our distribution range.

The results of our endeavors are now being presented in Arsenal cinema from July 2-5: three evenings each made up of two curated programs before a final "Long Night of Arab Shorts", which will consists of a more than four-hour program of individual works. Members of the audience, curators and filmmakers are invited to eat, drink and exchange ideas and opinions in the foyer during the breaks. We are particularly glad that curators Ala Younis, currently a Living Archive fellow, Yazan Khalili and Maha Maamoun and filmmakers and artists Monira Al Qadiri, Firas Taybeh, Ammar Bouras and Solmaz Shahbazi will be attending the event. Afterwards, the Arab Shorts will be going on tour and will be available for distribution.

How to speak of a revolution, the times before, the times that followed it. Made in 1980 on faded French and Egyptian revolutions, the rarely seen film TROP TÔT, TROT TARD (TOO EARLY, TOO LATE, 104') by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet was proposed through several screenings in 2011 as a timely means to open up and reflect on the events that had recently culminated in revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere. Many commentators praised the film for foreseeing the current, the present, moment. However this screening at Arsenal is meant to take a critical perspective on these claims and to investigate how the film can be positioned in relation to its production process, temporality, circulation, and appreciation.

Introduced and hosted by curators Ala Younis (Amman) and Tobias Hering (Berlin), the screening takes place within the context of the Living Archive project and aims at an open debate with everyone present. The film will be shown in the German version 16 mm print from the Arsenal archive; the discussion will be in English. Beginning is at 4.15 pm.