On the occasion of the exhibition "Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India" (Deutsche Guggenheim, June 26 – Oct. 10, 2010), we will present the second part of the film and discussion series "Moving Politics – Cinemas from India," curated by Dorothee Wenner and Nicole Wolf. Under the title "Practices of Belief/Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung," the events at the end of August are dedicated to the influence of religion(s) on Indian cinematography, which can hardly be overrated.

The introduction of new telecommunication technologies is closely linked to the history of Berlin: In 1922 the first regularly broadcasting radio station was founded in Berlin, in 1967 the starting signal for West German color television was given in the city, in 1980 West Berlin participated in the field test for interactive videotex of the Deutsche Bundespost (BTX), and five years later it was one of four locations of the cable pilot project. During the decade before the fall of the Wall, the high cabling density of the island city offered favorable technological conditions for testing the electronic net-working of households and the commercial expansion of the television landscape. For some, the leap to the digital age was the opportunity to provide universal information and communication offers, others saw a threat to privacy and civil rights in the commercialization and computerization of the worlds of life and work. In addition to this year's anniversaries of BTX and the cable pilot project, "Berlin am Kabel" refers to a second historical development: the increasing importance of video as an artistic production, presentation, and distribution format in the 1980s.

The production designer is the "eye of the director," says Ken Adams, the famous PD. The produc-tion design team visually implements the script, conceives and stages spaces, defines milieus, designs color dramaturgies, and provides a central component of the film's atmosphere and the world it evokes. Beyond evidently design-intensive genres such as sci-fi or period movies, a con-vincing production design is also a pivotal factor in productions less rich in props. Despite its con-spicuousness, it is all too often overseen that it makes a decisive contribution to the Ge-samtkunstwerk film.

Are special effects — or their digital counterpart, visual effects — a marginal field in cinematographic art, things pulled from a bag of tricks of tinkerers, firework-makers and computer freaks? Or do they mark the culmination of artistic-creative imagination? Are they a generator of illusions continuously striving for perfection, the most artificial construction in a world that is already artificial in itself: cinema? A view back to the beginnings of cinema makes it clear that the history of film is also the history of the technological manipulation of images. Almost ninety years after Méliès' first "magical" films and after numerous innovations in the field of special effects, this cinematic branch has also experienced its digital revolution. The possibilities offered by so-called computer generated images (abbreviated CGIs) appear boundless regarding the translation of imagination and fantasy into moving images. Yet computers and their "analogue" predecessors not only generate past or future worlds and their inhabitants, but also complex visualizations of emotional, perceptive and mental worlds. Our selection offers initial insights into the varied world of special effects.

Tarkovsky in the summer – this is a tradition that has grown dear to us and our audience over the past 20 years. In July and August we will screen the seven full-length and one short film of the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86), whose monumental oeuvre gives rise to lasting fascination.

Why Bruce LaBruce? – zombies, skins, punks, Marxism, hustlers, porn stars and female revolutionaries somewhere between art and pornography, film and politics, categories expanding beyond their usual limits. A surplus, a superlative, an underground, intestines. Something that is inside and out at the same time. Something that permeates everything and yet escapes every grasp: a politics of continuously wriggling out of the embrace.

Wim Wenders has been ranking among the most significant auteurs of contemporary cinema for four decades. Alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, he was the most prominent proponent of New German Cinema and the first director of his generation to succeed in making a leap to the United States and in creating a synthesis between mass and auteur cinema. Until today, his cinematographic oeuvre comprises more than 50 works, including 30 full-length feature films. An oeuvre in which — despite the diversity of forms and genres — recurring aspects can be discerned: the reflection on the production of images and the decline of cinema culture, the outstanding role of music, the preference for the cinema of John Ford and Yasujiro Ozu, his interest in the precise observation of movements — trips, changes of location, encounters — and, often combined with this, an ambivalent relation to "America." Many of Wenders' films are road movies narrating the escape from everyday life, new experiences and adventures, as well as restlessness, homelessness, movements of flight, and a vague quest, in which America plays a decisive role as the destination of flight — especially in Wenders' early movies.

It was melodramas from which the innovators of 1960s and 70s Latin American cinema got tear-filled eyes in their youth and which they later on rejected all the more vehemently as "products of alienation." Telenovelas have long since replaced melodramas and become today's audiovisual mass experiences. They often fall back on the same stereotypes and myths that were spawned by the classical cinema of dreams and tears in the middle of the last century: love with all convul-sions of passion, motherhood and male obsession, honor and faithfulness, guilt and atonement. The storylines are often outrageous and priggish, but at times also reveal remarkable socio-critical diagnoses. At any rate, what can be admired when viewing this cross-section of melodra-matic subgenres is the exquisite photography of cameraman Gabriel Figueroa as well as the highly expressive acting of the big stars of the period: María Félix, Libertad Lamarque, Dolores del Río, and Pedro Armendariz.

Accompanying the children's exhibition "In the Jungle", the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen will present a film series dedicated to the theme. On each last Sunday of the month, children who have acquired an ID as a jungle explorer have free admission to the film series upon presenting the document. The series comprises a total of eight films and ends in January 2011. As is the case with the exhibition, the film series is not only about jungle fantasies but also about the destruction of this important habitat. The series kicks of with the first film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's novel The Jungle Book. Zoltan Korda shot the story of Mowgli, who grew up with a group of bears, as a live action film and had his brother and producer install a large "jungle" with exotic plants and animals. The leading role in Korda's JUNGLE BOOK (GB 1942. June 27) is played by the Indian actor Sabu, who at the time the film was produced was already well-known for his role in The Thief of Bagdad.

In 2004, numerous pictures emerged documenting U.S. guards torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. "Picturing Violence" uses the torture scandal as a starting point to discuss how violence is depicted in contemporary media such as film, television and the Internet, and what implications and effects this has. The event starts with the documentary STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (USA 2008) by Errol Morris. Following the screening, the art historian Dora Apel, the cultural scholar Colin Dayan and the director Romuald Karmakar will discuss these themes together with the audience (in English). In addition, the cameraman Robert Chappell will talk about his work on the set of STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. Moderation: Michael Wildt (HU Berlin). (Silvan Niedermeier) (June 25)