Within the frame of the fourth Gallery Weekend Berlin, neugerriemschneider presents the group show, lost and found, from April 30 through May 29. The exhibition mainly presents cinematic, photographic and sculptural works by artists employing anthropological, ethnographic and archaeological techniques and strategies. In this context, Arsenal will show James Benning's film, AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) (USA 1984, May 2, 15 & 29), in which the filmmaker presents objects of his collection of Hank Aaron memorabilia. A film about found and lost objects and the confusing spaces in between. The soundtrack consists of alternating recordings of public speeches and excerpts of pop songs from 1954 to 1976, each corresponding with the dates of the shown objects.

Within the frame of the show, Minimalism Germany 1960s, that is for the first time exclusively dedicated to artists working in Germany between 1954 and 1974 in a reductionist manner, a three-day symposium will take place at Daimler Contemporary. As a prelude to the event, Marc Glöde has curated a film program including some of the most crucial works closely tied to the aesthetic of minimalism or structural film. The selection is not limited to historical positions but includes more recent works obliged to these formal approaches. Alongside works by Peter Roehr, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, and Morgan Fisher, films by Karø Goldt as well as Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller will be presented. (Marc Glöde) (May 13)

Cosplay, parcours, yarn bombing, and other (occasionally more decorative) forms of appropriation bear witness to the urge to utilize the city as a stage. But how is power and where are conflicts revealed? The creative classes, armed with coffee cups, cluster through the image-city. Isn't it the case that the indebted cities have meanwhile become the venues of fights for the "right to the city"? Has the city become "our factory"? Is it all about "condensed diversities" or Profitopolis? The UdK seminar held by Madeleine Bernstorff examines documentary and performative image practices in the city, using historical and contemporary film examples addressing the production of space. Based on camera machines, texts and images, at issue are social and physical landscapes, undefined wastelands and the "second nature" of nature. (Madeleine Bernstorff) (May 11 & 12)

On the occasion of actor Winfried Glatzeder's 65th birthday, the DEFA-Stiftung, in the second edition of its monthly film series, will present two films in a double feature: In DAS LAND HINTER DEM REGENBOGEN (D 1990, as guests: Winfried Glatzeder in a conversation with Ralf Schenk), Glatzeder plays the father of the young "rainbow maker," who grows up in a village in the GDR in the early 1950s. Life there is defined by violence and destruction. Together with beautiful Marie, the rainbow maker dreams of fleeing over the rainbow.

It is well known that most films are the result of a joint creative process. As early as the 1920s, film collectives, groups and "factories" were established for not only practical but often also political reasons. In May, the Magical History Tour is dedicated not to the large groups, which we partially already presented under the heading "Pamphlets and Manifestos." The focus is instead on the smallest possible community in the process of creating films: the creative couple that in close cooperation often lasting for years and decades has created a characteristic body of films unmistakably shaped by both persons.

Heinz Emigholz' early cinematic work provided important impulses for the international experimental film movement of the 1970s and 80s. Within the frame of Forum Expanded 2010, we presented an installation of seven films from 1972-1977 at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart. Together with Filmgalerie 451, the films were published on two DVDs. For the first time, the project offers the opportunity to survey the interrelations in this completed group of works: SCHENEC-TADY I, II and III, ARROWPLANE, TIDE, HOTEL, and DEMON.

Until May 6, Arsenal will screen further films within the frame of the Jewish Film Festival that promise unusual, surprising, amusing, and thought-provoking insights into Jewish life across the world.

The remembrance of its own colonial past is only very weak in Germany, the common form of archiving being suppression. How can an archive be created that instead remembers actively, also the history of resistance, and that can be used to conceive a possible future? Cinema plays a special role in this regard: as collective memory, as a place for conveying and updating history in the present. Cinema and colonialism are also historically linked; especially in Germany, cinema was a place of colonial fantasies. But cinema is also always resistive. What kind of cinema is created where, how is it made and how is it viewed? What do center and periphery mean in this context?

One can't stop wondering and has no idea what is happening to oneself when watching the films of the Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes. His two full-length and six short films offer bizarre topics, wild, meandering forms and an irrepressible imagination. They are in many respects idiosyncratic, inventive, playful, frolicsome, disorderly, anarchic, and absurd. Gomes ignores genre borders and narrative conventions, he doesn't play by the customary rules of the game and employs all kinds of means drawn from the cinematic treasure chest. He confuses the levels of time, artfully blurs the borders between documentary and fiction, unexpectedly changes the stops, and jumps from one genre to the next: His films are fairy-tale, musical, comedy, and melodrama all in one. The theme is often coming of age, or young men’s fear and refusal to grow up. Music always plays an important role.

John Ford (1894–1973) is doubtlessly one of the outstanding personalities in the history of cinema, a masterly image stylist and virtuoso storyteller. The scope of his oeuvre – he shot more than 140 films in 60 years (of which many early ones are lost, however) – is imposing, his contribution to the development of cinematography evident, and his influence on following generations of filmmakers undeniable. Ford’s films possess great aesthetic-stylistic beauty and diversity, ranging from the expressionistic-gloomy works of the late 1920s and early 30s, in which one senses the influence of F.W. Murnau (e.g., THE INFORMER, 1935), all the way to his late, strongly reduced and straightforward westerns (e.g., THE SEARCHERS, 1956). A similarly wide range is offered by the number of different genres in which John Ford's movies are set. In addition to westerns, for which he is still most famous (although he shot only one western between 1926 and 1945 –STAGECOACH, 1939), he directed numerous war and adventure movies (THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, 1936), social dramas (THE GRAPES OF WRATH, 1940, and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, 1941), as well as comedies set in the Confederate states (THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, 1952). Born as the last of 13 children of an Irish immigration family in Maine (USA), John Ford deals in many of his films with the pivotal moments of American history, its mythical dimensions and legends. Frequent themes include the appropriation of land, the violent reclaiming of land in the American West, the Civil War, or the founding of the nation. In Ford’s films, the world is in a state of change and reorientation, his protagonists are searching for community, a homeland and identity. Ford’s heroes are usually lonely persons, outsiders, loners, who mainly in the West, against the backdrop of a seemingly boundless nature and an overpowering landscape (expansive steppes or the claustrophobic Monument Valley), establish a community, but often fail to find one themselves. A special kind of community is what Ford developed behind the camera, repeatedly working with the same crew members and actors. The latter, including Harry Carey, Will Rogers, John Wayne, Henry Fonda or James Stewart, epitomized Ford’s torn heroes, and they often not only began their career working with Ford but also played their best roles in his movies.