A children’s conference is also taking place alongside the main conference, with films, discussions, museum tours and a workshop all intended to provide children from eight to twelve years of age with insights into film history, analysis and production. One of the programs that forms part of our in-house film education scheme "What is Cinema?" will be presented as part of the children’s conference. Stefanie Schlüter, one of the three initiators of "What is Cinema?" will be using a series of short films to pose the very question that gives the scheme its name to open the children’s conference. Communicating experimental film forms to children and young people forms the focus of two additional presentations to be given by Stefanie Schlüter on July 25.

Over the past 10 years, a new, experimental variant of documentary has emerged in Austrian and German filmmaking: Films that work with explicit mise-en-scènes, alienation effects and performative appearances to literally set the stage for researched documentary material that forms their basis. The "Performing Documentary" program brings these documentary films together and sets them in a discursive context for the first time.

The publication not only includes texts about the films but original contributions by the filmmakers in which they reflect on current patterns of documentary representation and introduce their own approaches.

With texts by Birgit Kohler, Tina Leisch, Anja Salomonowitz, Gerhard Friedl, Calle Overweg, Volko Kamensky, Thomas Fürhapter, Stefan Landorf, Andres Veiel and Romuald Karmakar.

Arab Shorts
"Arab Shorts"refers to a whole range of different things: a small festival, a website (www.arabshorts.net), a travel program to enable those involved in Arab film to travel to Germany and Germans to travel to the Middle East, and a series of moderated screenings and publications. "Arab Shorts" is a three-year project being carried out by Goethe Institutes in North Africa and the Middle East which seeks to create a more intensive network of contacts between those active in the independent Arab film scene and Europe. The project also seeks to provide insights into an area of special cultural resonance – a world beyond the shackles of state control where an unstinting proximity to reality and artistic radicalism find articulation. A total of 19 curators put together a selection of films and present them on a yearly basis.

In the beginning, there was light – a concept inextricably linked to cinema. The projection beam passes through the film strip and the lens, makes its way through the glass pane of the projection room and into the auditorium, hitting the screen at the speed of light as the film begins. The brightness of a high-wattage projection bulb is like a radiant final echo of the fundamental subject of film and cinema: light. It is impossible to shoot a film without daylight or artificial light, without key or fill lighting, without floodlights or soft light, or, above all, without the work of the camera and lighting team responsible for designing the lighting and positioning it on set. Lighting forms an essential artistic resource for the director, capable of telling stories or affecting how they are told, creating moods and unleashing emotions. We will be dedicating this month's Magical History Tour to the varied art of lighting design in film both by showing 11 films spanning 80 years and presenting the new edition of Richard Blank's book Film & Licht (Alexander Verlag) on June 16.

Nearly 50 years after its foundation, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art now boasts a film collection comprising 8,000 titles, which chart the course of international cinematic art based on the lively history of an institution. 30 filmmakers, artists and curators will be developing projects that take the archive’s holdings as a starting point. A grant program set up by the Goethe Institute will also enable people from abroad to participate.

With presentations on Iranian film, the cinema of Hayao Miyazaki, children's film from the Czech Republic and a look at the work of the Generation section of the Berlinale, the conference seeks to recognize the cinematographic range of these films. Different approaches to communicating children's film will be discussed and practical and innovative examples of work with children in the cinema will be presented, including the French film educational program "Les enfants de cinéma" and other similar projects concerned with experimental films and documentaries. The conference will be further complemented by screenings of A PAS DE LOUP (On The Sly) and DA KANN NOCH VIEL PASSIEREN (THere's a Lot That Can Still Happen) as well as a preview of BAD O MEH (Wind and Fog).