To follow the world premiere of Heinz Emigholz's architecture film PARABETON – PIER LUIGI NERVI AND ROMAN CONCRETE, a panel of eminent personalities will be discussing Emigholz’s work at the newly re-opened Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Architect Arno Brandlhuber, film scholar Prof. Gertrud Koch and curator Anselm Franke will be in conversation with director Heinz Emigholz following the screening of the film, with Hanns Zischler chairing the discussion. Heinz Emigholz has been working on the "Architecture as Autobiography" series since 1993, recounting the biographies of individual architects by means of their buildings and creating a diary of his own cinematic approach to these spaces. The third autobiography in the series deals with modern architecture. PARABETON explores Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi’s work and relates it to the great Roman concrete buildings from the start of the Common Era. "By going back to the Roman origins of the constructional core of modernism PARABETON will form the finale of my film series Architecture as Autobiography." (Heinz Emigholz)

Several events at this year's Forum Expanded are linked to the Living Archive project such as presentations by project participants and panel discussions on archival politics. "Möglichkeitsraum IV - Access: Diamond, Enter, Fin... Archival Viewing Acts (Speculations on the Invention and Emergence of New Subject Constellations in Cinema)" on February 10 is a performative archival screening by project participants Angela Melitopoulos and Constanze Ruhm, in which film clips from the Forum program in 1972 are shown in a performative act of assembly as a public process of viewing. On February 14, Harun Farocki will be holding a film lecture following the screening of LA VERIFICA INCERTA (Gianfranco Baruchello/Alberto Grifi, Italien 1965, 16mm, 31 min) at HAU2, and Avi Mograbi will be presenting "At the Back/The Details" - a program consisting of a video performance and live music at HAU2 on February 18. Two panel discussions will take place at the Filmhaus: "Cairo: the City, the Images, the Archives" chaired by Marcel Schwierin on February 11, and "Programming the Archive" on February 12, chaired by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus.

The 7th edition of Forum Expanded opens on February 8 with the "Critique and Clinic" group exhibition at Kunstsaele Berlin. The opening starts at 6 pm; the exhibition will then be open daily from 11 to 8 pm. Another group exhibition with works by Elle Flanders/Tamira Sawatzky, Yazan Khalili and Anne Quirynen will be opened on February 9 between 5 and 7 pm and will then be open daily from 11 to 8 pm. There is an artits' talk on February 10 at 12 pm. Steve Reineke's installation "The Tiny Ventriloquist" located in the Marshall McLuhan Salon of Canada's embassy will open its doors on February 10 at 6 pm and can be visited daily from 12 to 6 pm (weekends 2-6 pm). WHITEONWHITE:ALGORITHMICNOIR von Eve Sussman/Rufus Corporation, an experimental movie that runs forever and is being edited live in real time by a custom written computer code, can be seen daily at Arsenal 2 between 4 and 6 pm. The opening on February 10 at 4.30 pm will be attended by the artists.

Several events at this year's Forum Expanded are linked to the Living Archive project such as presentations by project participants and panel discussions on archival politics. "Möglichkeitsraum IV - Access: Diamond, Enter, Fin... Archival Viewing Acts (Speculations on the Invention and Emergence of New Subject Constellations in Cinema)" on February 10 is a performative archival screening by project participants Angela Melitopoulos and Constanze Ruhm, in which film clips from the Forum program in 1972 are shown in a performative act of assembly as a public process of viewing. On February 14, Harun Farocki will be holding a film lecture following the screening of LA VERIFICA INCERTA (Gianfranco Baruchello/Alberto Grifi, Italien 1965, 16mm, 31 min) at HAU2, and Avi Mograbi will be presenting "At the Back/The Details" - a program consisting of a video performance and live music at HAU2 on February 18. Two panel discussions will take place at the Filmhaus: "Cairo: the City, the Images, the Archives" chaired by Marcel Schwierin on February 11, and "Programming the Archive" on February 12, chaired by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus.

The 2012 program is now available online. Detailed information and screening dates of all Forum and Forum Expanded films and events can be found via the program menu point.

Sandrine Bonnaire is one of the most famous and popular French actresses of her generation. Since her debut in Maurice Pialat's A NOS AMOURS (1983), she has worked with numerous auteurs, including Claude Chabrol, Raymond Depardon, Jacques Doillon, André Téchiné, Jacques Rivette, Claude Sautet and Agnès Varda, and has demonstrated her astounding versatility. She made three films – more than with any other director – with Maurice Pialat who discovered her at a casting session she had accompanied her sister to as a 15-year-old with no intention of auditioning. Her first role propelled Bonnaire, who stemmed from a working class family in Clermont-Ferrand and was the seventh of eleven children, to fame and secured her not only numerous offers of work but her first prize – the César Award for Most Promising Actress. Two years later, she won the César for Best Actress for her impressive interpretation of the vagabond Mona in Agnès Varda's SANS TOIT NI LOI. Her early success is also remarkable because of the fact that the first films Sandrine Bonnaire, who never went to acting school, played in are charac-terized by her courage to take on unattractive roles, her defiance, and a particularly tumultuous physical presence. The physicality of her young years has since given way to a more discreet introverted acting style; but what have remained are her austerity and inscrutability. Bonnaire is neither a downright beauty nor a resplendent heroine. When she acts it is without the pretensions of a star; she is neither facile nor affected, nor is she sentimental, lending her characters depth but also preserving their mystery. Having spent the first 15 years of her career working with great French auteurs, Bonnaire has in recent years worked mainly with young directors. In 2007, she swapped places for the first time to stand behind the camera, directing ELLE S'APPELLE SABINE, a documentary about her autistic sister. She is currently completing her feature film debut.

In January, we are paying homage to the cameraman Boris Kaufman (1897 – 1980) whose career spanned French poetic realism of the 1920s and Hollywood cinema of the 1950s and 60s, and whose name is associated with three great directors: Jean Vigo, Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet. Kaufman was born in Bialystok, at the time part of the Russian Empire and now in Poland, in 1897. He went to Paris in the 1920s to study philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne, while his older brothers were making film history in Moscow. With their manifestos and films, Dziga Vertov (Denis) and his cameraman Mikhail revolutionized documentary filmmaking, calling for the "camera-eye" to be emancipated from the task of merely reproducing the alleged truth in front of the camera. Influenced by his brothers, Boris began making shorts in France in 1928 and two years later he started working closely with Jean Vigo. The two made some of the most beautiful works of poetic realism before the latter's premature death in 1934. Kaufman escaped Nazi-occupied France in 1941, making it to the US via Canada. His US breakthrough came in 1954 when he won the Best Cinematography Oscar for ON THE WATERFRONT. Kaufman's camera work is characterized by a great sensitivity for the singularity of each film; he finds images for poetry, realism and dreams. "It was always the same thing for me – I had to find the camera style that was most appropriate for the story's subject, and in harmony with it; to look at each new item from a fresh angle; to avoid the same patterns that I had used in earlier films."