Sylvie Boisseau's and Frank Westermeyer's videos and installations often revolve around the questions of community and inclusion as well as ostracism and the investigation of the performativity of identity and its constitution in language. In CHINESE IS A PLUS (2008), which we recently added to the program of arsenal distribution, they follow the participants of two chinese language courses, on the one hand children of chinese immigrants who want to improve their Chinese skills, on the other german adults, who learn Chinese as a foreign language. A recurrent figure in Westermeyer's & Boisseau's work is F., who serves as a kind of "neutral model of the self". While in CHINESE IS A PLUS F. takes on the part of an observer, in MOI VU PAR … (1999) his identity is put together through the images that others have of him and MY FAMILY AND I asks the question "What if I had been some other parents' son". In the Black Box we show JOIN A WORLD OF 150 MILLION FRENCH SPEAKERS – A VIDEO WITH LE GROUPE DU MERCREDI, CHICAGO (2005/2008), a "living sculpture" of the french speaking community in Chicago. (10.12.)

As a supplement to the films about the Berlin Wall, which Cynthia Beatt shot in 1988 and 2009 with Tilda Swinton on a bicycle, we present a further film by the director: THE PARTY – NATURE MORTE (1991) is a black-and-white film in which the calm camera work of Elfi Mikesch depicts friendly relationships during a party. The invitation was extended by a couple (Tilda Swinton and Lutz Weidlich) that after waking up on a Sunday has nothing to say to each other anymore. Their faces reveal mutual contempt. So they say: "It's time for a party." Among the illustrious guests are Christian Petzold, Lilly Grote, Sarah Wiener, Ed Cantu, Konstanze Binder, Regina Ulwer, Vincenzo Bugno, Jochen Brunow, and a host of others. (Dec. 9)

The possibilities of newsreels between 1933 and 1945 consisted in accompanying and underpinning the policies of the "Third Reich". Anti-Semitic policies are also reflected in this medium. The event follows the proposition of "salvation anti-Semitism" as formulated by Saul Friedländer in his books The Years of Persecution and The Years of Extermination. Upon a closer examination of the newsreels from this time, it becomes clear how the image of Jews was presented and how it changed over time. This development can be shown using selected examples from the three phases of anti-Semitic policies and the propaganda accompanying them. (Kerstin Stutterheim)

An event by CineGraph Babelsberg in cooperation with the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and the Deutsche Kinemathek. Introduction: Kerstin Stutterheim (Dec. 7)

In 1988, director Cynthia Beatt filmed Tilda Swinton as they followed the Berlin Wall, capturing the inward-looking West Berlin and the over-the-Wall views of East Berlin. Today, CYCLING THE FRAME is a rare document. 21 years later, Beatt and Swinton retraced the line of the Wall that once divided Berlin – THE INVISIBLE FRAME describes this journey this time on both sides of the former Wall. Screenings of both films every Sunday at 5 p.m.

LA RÈGLE Du JEU (The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, F 1939, Dec. 1). Rarely have actors been rushed through a film in such a modern way as in this case. A media-conscious bourgeois celebrates par-ties and dances with the devil. This is a world in which the Atlantic has to be crossed in record speed to prove one's love, and that provides sayings such as: "It gets colder when the sun doesn't shine."

In 2009 the ONE WORLD BERLIN film festival on human rights and media will be staged for the sixth time. The program, running since November, will be continued until Dec. 2.

This month the Magical History Tour focuses on the grand gestures: Films situated between excess and opulence that are manifested in the boundless personal involvement of the director or an unleashed artistic vision. Opulence and excessiveness, however, are no means in themselves. They instead express a creative will asserting itself against numerous constraints and resistances. Films dedicated to absolute realism stand alongside films whose adequate formal solution lies in extreme stylization.

IndieLisboa definitely ranks among the most exciting young film festivals. Founded in 2004 by committed enthusiasts, it has already become Portugal’s most important film festival and gained high international reputation. Intelligently and ambitiously curated, IndieLisboa shows what is currently causing a stir in international cinema, presenting so-called “Independent Heroes” (like recently Werner Herzog, Jacques Nolot and José Luis Guerín) as well as the newest Portuguese short and full-length films. Each year in April, one can make numerous discoveries in the universe of independent cinema in Lisbon. Arsenal is delighted to offer the highly regarded colleagues of IndieLisboa a platform to present their festival in three programs comprised of current films from Portugal – short and full-length films reflecting a broad range of genres and styles that have never before been shown in Berlin.

Michelangelo Antonioni's (1912–2007) answer to the question posed in an interview in 1978 – what he would have done in a world without films – was short and concise: "Films!" Even if cinema could look back on a history of close to fifty years when Antonioni started with his first film GENTE DEL PO (1943–47), the "architect of modern cinema" and the "perfecter of forms" innovated, shaped and transformed cinema like few other directors have. With his movies, he redefined the possibilities of filmic narration, the representation of cinematic time and pictorial composition, thus challenging, irritating, polarizing, and enthusing the audience and critics alike. His films always focus on psychologically unstable protagonists (played by Italian, French and later American movie stars such as Monica Vitti, Lucia Bosè, Jeanne Moreau, Alain Delon, Marcello Mastroianni, or Jack Nicholson) and their fragile emotional states. Lonesome and alienated, they move about in labyrinthine, empty cities and architectural landscapes. In a cool and subtle manner, at times distanced, Antonioni stages their inability to enter into relationships – they lose themselves before they get a chance to find each other.

Vaginal Davis, who came to Berlin from L.A. in 2007, has since then invited the audience each month to intimate silent movie evenings. On the anniversary, the drag performance star will dedicate the program, like at the opening, to the actress Louise Brooks. This time PRIX DE BEAUTÉ (Beauty Prize, 1930, Nov. 29) by Augusto Genina will be screened. It was shot as a silent movie and completed as a talkie. Louise Brooks plays the role of a typist who wins a beauty contest and becomes a celebrated actress. In the last scene of the movie, she is shot dead under her own movie image. Vaginal Davis will greet our piano player Eunice Martins to the screening of the silent version. Afterwards Miss Davis invites her audience to drinks in the Rote Foyer.