At the request of Entuziazm e.V. (Michael Baute, Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke and Stefanie Schlüter), we will be discussing LA MACCHINA CINEMA (Italy 1978, OV/GeS) on October 11. It was first shown in the Forum in 1979 and then found its way into the archive of the Friends of the Deutsche Kinemathek, today's Arsenal. The five-part film was the result of a joint project by a collective comprising the filmmakers Marco Bellochio and Silvano Agosti and the critics Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli. It has a total length of 268 minutes and "draws the line that encircles the phenomenon of cinema and its myth. The five stages of this "journey" from the province to Cinecitta, from the world of Sunday film amateurs to the might of bright and ornamental industrial cinema are made up of one slow "zoom shot" and a series of continuous "focus shots". It is not by chance that LA MACCHINA CINEMA begins with a "long shot" of a foggy landscape and ends with a close-up shot of an autopsy table." (Forum Catalogue Info 1979)

In his film THE DECLINE OF THE CENTURY: TESTAMENT L.Z. Lordan Zafranović says: "When opening a box of films from the past we open a book of infinite wisdom." The YU GO Bandits! film program shown in conjunction with the exhibition Spaceship Yugoslavia –The Suspension of Time (at NGBK from September 24 – October 30) talks about the pages of this book, about the treasures of a country and its history, even after its demise. Although at the beginning, film production in Yugoslavia was largely dictated by the communist regime and had to serve "agitprop" purposes, some very significant films emerged from this era. The Yugoslav partisan films reached their peak at the end of the 1960s and have since had their place in spectacular epic cinema. No other nation has translated the national liberation struggle into so many different genres, applying special authorial approaches and looking at the subject from so many different perspectives. In this season, the partisan films are supplemented by works of the "Black Wave" and by more recent films that deal with Yugoslavia from today's perspective. The terms "New Yugoslav Film" or "Black Wave" established themselves in the 1960s and the work of significant auteur-dissidents such as Dušan Makavejev and Želimir Žilnik soon won international acclaim. They described and criticized the shortcomings of society, demanded more socialism for the people and created filmic masterpieces. These directors are ideological partisans or bandits (as the fascists liked to call the partisans), and in their revival of the anti-fascist point of view their films are still pertinent today. This season invites viewers to reconsider this and the whole complexity of socialist Yugoslavia. All the films will be introduced by the curator Vedrana Madžar.

Since arriving in Berlin in 2007, the silent movie expert Vaginal Davis has hosted a monthly film event, and to celebrate four years she is dedicating the next session to Louise Brooks, just as she did the opening session.

To mark UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on October 27, Mariann Lewinsky is presenting early films from 1907 to 1911 from the Deutsche Kinemathek's archive .

The children's classics program is almost always connected to the Magical History Tour, but because we don't have a film history season this month, we are completely independent. Therefore, we are granting a special request and every Sunday for five weeks running we are screening a great classic with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy:

From October 1, Philip Scheffner's DAY OF THE SPARROW (Germany 2010) is available on our VoD Channel at realeyez.tv. In his new film, Philip Scheffner, a passionate birdwatcher in his spare time, creates an audacious homage to a particular sparrow which managed to attain international fame. Scheffner sets out on a fantastic search for clues with the meticulousness of a detective, which takes him from the murder of the sparrow by a Dutch media concern to a nearly forgotten holiday resort on the Baltic Sea. His search finally takes him to the fences of various forbidden zones in the provinces and suburbs of both East and West Germany. Led by a camera that is precise to the point of obsession and a soundtrack that is almost overly attentive, this cinematic investigation eventually turns into a contemporary political thriller. It’s absolutely astounding, expect perhaps for particular birdwatchers and pilots, who have long since noticed the similarities between the gentle landscapes by the river Mosel and Afghani battlefields. It was therefore probably no coincidence that the sparrow’s heroic death took place on the same day that the 18th German soldier died in Afghanistan.

Since this February, a selection of films from the arsenal distribution range has been available at ARTE Creative, an interactive platform that also encompasses experimental film and video work. Every month, a new arsenal distribution film is added to the channel, which is then available for streaming over a one-year period. Meggie Schneider's OUR PRIDE AND GLORY (Germany 2009, 12’) and Stephen Dwoskin's ASCOLTA! (Italy/Great Britain 2008, 6’) are the latest additions to our ARTE Creative channel. Florian Zeyfangs film INTRODUCTION TO A SHORT HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY (Germany 2008, 12’), DER FATER (Germany 1986, 26') by Christine Noll Brinckmann, Marie Losier’s TONY CONRAD DREAMINIMALIST (USA 2008, 26', English original version), Ayse Erkmen’s COFFEE (Turkey 2007, 25') - which was first shown in the Forum Expanded section of the 2008 Berlinale –Phil Collin’s SOY MI MADRE and Keren Cytter’s film DER SPIEGEL (Germany 2007, 4’) are all still available for streaming. Further films and videos from the arsenal distribution range will be added over the next few months.

As part of the Arab Shorts festival at the Goethe Institute in Cairo we are presenting a shorts program on the role of the image in the transformation process. It includes works by Tödliche Doris, Tom Holert, Florian Zeyfang, Mohammadreza Farzad, Paul Rowley/David Phillips/Tim Blue, Franziska Cordes and Martin Ebner. Just before, the same program will be shown at the Molodist International Film Festival in Kiev (October 22-30). Here, we present Arsenal as an archive, cinema and festival, with its interest in the border zone between film and the other arts. We are showing films by Maya Deren, as well as THE SLEEPING GIRL by Rainer Kirberg (Germany, 2011) from the 6. Forum Expanded program.