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-Institut 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 are very happy that the majority of works from this year's Forum Expanded can now be booked via our catalogue: KING LOST HIS TOOTH and T.S.T.L (Libanon 2012) by Gheit Al-Amine, AS THEY SAY (Hicham Ayouch, Morocco, United Arab Emirates 2011) FALGOOSH / BLAMES AND FLAMES (Mohammadreza Farzad, Iran 2011), THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASS IN ENGLAND – LITTLE IRLAND. 1842/ 2011 (Rainer Ganahl, Austria, Great Britain, USA 2011), BYE BYE (Paul Geday, Egypt, The Netherlands 2012), MY FATHER IS STILL A COMMUNIST, INTIMATE SECRETS TO BE PUBLISHED (Ahmed Ghossein, Libanon 2011), O.G.B.I.P. [ Our Global Behaviour Is Psychopathic II ] (Virlani Hallberg & Jennifer Rainsford, Sweden 2011), RIVERRED (Eva Heldmann, Germany 2011), TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FAGLAR OCH ORM / DRAGONFLIES WITH BIRDS AND SNAKES (Wolfgang Lehmann, Sweden, Germany 2011), LA ROUGE ET LA NOIRE (Isabelle Prim, France 2011), PERIL OF THE ANTILLES (Fern Silva, USA, Haiti 2011), FATHER, MOTHER, WHAT SHOULD I FILM TODAY? (Isabell Spengler, Germany 2011) as well as installative works like BAROMETER (I) (Heike Baranowsky, Germany 2011), A TALE OF TWO ISLANDS (Paola Calvo & Steffen Köhn, Germany 2011), A WORLD OF OUR OWN (Eline McGeorge, Norway, Great Britain 2011), SEEKING THE MONKEY KING (Ken Jacobs, USA 2011) and VENUS MISSION (Anne Quirynen, Belgium, Germany 2012).

We are very happy that the majority of works from this year's Forum Expanded can now be booked via our catalogue: KING LOST HIS TOOTH and T.S.T.L (Libanon 2012) by Gheit Al-Amine, AS THEY SAY (Hicham Ayouch, Morocco, United Arab Emirates 2011) FALGOOSH / BLAMES AND FLAMES (Mohammadreza Farzad, Iran 2011), THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASS IN ENGLAND – LITTLE IRLAND. 1842/ 2011 (Rainer Ganahl, Austria, Great Britain, USA 2011), BYE BYE (Paul Geday, Egypt, The Netherlands 2012), MY FATHER IS STILL A COMMUNIST, INTIMATE SECRETS TO BE PUBLISHED (Ahmed Ghossein, Libanon 2011), O.G.B.I.P. [ Our Global Behaviour Is Psychopathic II ] (Virlani Hallberg & Jennifer Rainsford, Sweden 2011), RIVERRED (Eva Heldmann, Germany 2011), TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FAGLAR OCH ORM / DRAGONFLIES WITH BIRDS AND SNAKES (Wolfgang Lehmann, Sweden, Germany 2011), LA ROUGE ET LA NOIRE (Isabelle Prim, France 2011), PERIL OF THE ANTILLES (Fern Silva, USA, Haiti 2011), FATHER, MOTHER, WHAT SHOULD I FILM TODAY? (Isabell Spengler, Germany 2011) as well as installative works like BAROMETER (I) (Heike Baranowsky, Germany 2011), A TALE OF TWO ISLANDS (Paola Calvo & Steffen Köhn, Germany 2011), A WORLD OF OUR OWN (Eline McGeorge, Norway, Great Britain 2011), SEEKING THE MONKEY KING (Ken Jacobs, USA 2011) and VENUS MISSION (Anne Quirynen, Belgium, Germany 2012).