The UDK seminar of Madeleine Bernstorff puts possibilities of filmic dissent up for debate. What parodic and joyful, rigorous and dead serious filmic/political strategies are adequate for countering the erosion of the political? What makes films propagandistic? How free can images be? Is it about examining them anew time and again? And where can we find the cinema of social and political interventions? "The essential aspect of politics lies in the modes of subjectivization based on dissent, which posits the difference between society and oneself … Consensus is the reduction of politics to the police." (Jacques Rancière) Films by Vera Chytilová, Robert Nelson, États généraux du cinéma, Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, Joyce Wieland, Hellmuth Costard, Thomas Struck, Cristina Perincioli, Zelimir Zilnik, Peter Krieg, Marcel Broodthaers, Vlado Kristl, Heynowski + Scheumann, Ken Jacobs, Karl Gass, and Stefan Hayn.

On Nov. 7, the Israeli stipend recipient of the DAAD's Berlin Artists Program, Dalia Hager, will present her film CLOSE TO HOME (Karov la bayit, Israel 2005), which she made together with Vidu Bilu. It is the first feature film dealing with the experiences of women in the Israeli army. Smadar and Mirit, both 18 years old, are assigned to patrol the streets of Jerusalem together as part of their military service. They are assigned to detain any Palestinian passers-by and check their papers. However, the two young girls are immersed in the details of their own lives – their romantic crushes and the multifaceted relationship evolving between the two of them. Then one day, Jerusalem's political reality is forced upon them.

On Nov. 5, the Canadian stipend recipient of the DAAD's Berlin Artists Program, Daniel Cockburn, will personally present a program with his short films and videos titled "You Are In A Maze Of Twisty Little Passages, All Different".

This month, the program of "Classics Not Only For Children" will again be oriented toward the theme of the Magical History Tour, "Bodies in Cinema". Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are known for their characteristic body language, their great physical exertion at the service of comedy. We will screen one film of each.

Two films by Andrzej Wajda that focus on important eras in Polish history – the Stalinist period and the strikes at the shipyards in Gdansk. CZŁOWIEK Z MARMURU (Man of Marble, Andrzej Wajda, Poland 1977, Nov. 4) The film student Agnieszka is planning a documentary on a "hero of labor" of the 1950s. In the basement of a museum she comes upon the discarded statue of the worker Mateusz Birkut and starts researching the "man of marble" in archives and old newsreels.

Within the framework of the UdK seminar "Politics and Poetics of Filming", Helga Fanderl will personally present her super 8 films on Nov. 9. Her short films are created in the camera through the gesture of filming itself and are not processed afterwards. They are concentrated, fragile moments of the present in interaction with the filmed object. Each subject is given its own filmic form and rhythm. For each projection, the filmmaker combines a selection of films that harmonize and give insights into her work.

21 years after Cynthia Beatt's filmic journey along the Berlin Wall with Tilda Swinton, CYCLING THE FRAME (1988), the two this summer again traveled the line that the Wall cut through Berlin. In THE INVISIBLE FRAME (2009), they follow the same path through a variety of border landscapes, this time, however, on both the Western and Eastern side of Berlin. The further Tilda Swinton gets on her bicycle tour, the clearer it becomes what the Berlin Wall once separated and to what extent the city has changed since the Wall came down. We are delighted to show THE INVISIBLE FRAME on Nov. 8 in the presence of Cynthia Beatt, Tilda Swinton and Frieder Schlaich as a German premiere at Arsenal. From Nov. 15 on, the film we be shown each Sunday together with CYCLING THE FRAME at 5 p.m. at Arsenal. An event in cooperation with Filmgalerie 451.

The November pogrom marks a central turning-point in the anti-Semitic policy of National Socialist Germany. On the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, thousands of Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes were destroyed and at least 91 people murdered in an action initiated by the SA. Despite the ban issued on filming and photographing, several film documents from private sources do exist. Official recordings show the "leveling" of the ruins. All of these documents can also be found in subsequent documentations of the events and have visually shaped the images and conceptions of the pogrom.

Until November 15, the exhibition "Seized" will be on view at Art Laboratory Berlin. Among others, the show focuses on the artist and scientist Steve Kurtz, who in 2004 was suspected of and charged with bio-terrorism by the FBI. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson deals with this case that caused an international stir in her most recent film STRANGE CULTURE (USA 2007, Nov. 2). Based on documentary recordings, interviews, short acting scenes and comics, she examines the accusations made against Kurtz. This film is part of an international campaign in which famous artists such as Tilda Swinton show their solidarity with Kurtz. After the screening, there will be a discussion with Eberhard Schultz (lawyer), Mark C. Donfried (Institute for Cultural Diplomacy), Christian de Lutz, and Regine Rapp (both Art Laboratory Berlin).

LE JOUR SE LÈVE (Daybreak, Marcel Carné, F 1939; with Jean Gabin, dialogs by Jaques Prévert and production design by Alexandre Trauner, Nov. 3, 10 and 17). The film starts with a crescendo, followed by white writing on a black ground that immediately says it all: "A man has murdered. Locked up in his room, he remembers the circumstances that made him a murderer." An evening, a night, a morning, and three long flashbacks: time is inflected, prolonged and compressed: the last hours of the factory worker Francois until he shoots himself before he is shot by someone else. The protagonists are orphans, and the film is about the freedom into which they were placed, like into a straightjacket. A film against humanism and for poetic form. Three times a month, three different topics: modern acting, modern dialogs, modern buildings. (Heinz Emigholz)