This year's FIPRESCI prize goes to DIE KINDER DER TOTEN by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska. The statement by jury members Eithne Mary O’Neill, Suncica Unevska and Ricardo Brunn reads: The actors are amateurs, as well as the directing, the make up looks cheap, the director's didn't even read the novel they were adapting. Everything could have gone wrong with this film, but it did not fail. Instead it brings life to a novel almost impossible to transpose by doing a silent film about the rise of the living dead, which is not only the rise of the repressed past, but also a rise of cinema, using the nearly dead format - super 8, reminiscent of home movies. The result is hilarious, edgy, at times confusing, funny and something not everyone will agree on. But this is cinema: We need to disagree!

Our series Filmmakers' Choice is to be continued on February 18. The program’s curators - Eva Heldmann and Katja Wiederspahn - are linked by a deep friendship and working relationship, which from the start involved watching and discussing films together, especially – in the 1980s - those made by lesbian and/or feminist filmmakers. A central concern was the critical exploration of their own relationships with their mothers, particularly regarding their mothers’ experiences during the Nazi era, as well as the relationship between sexual taboos and maternal love formulated by Louise Bourgeois.

The annual symposium, which takes place in the context of Forum Expanded on February 14, focusses on unexplored, forgotten, or precarious film archives as well as archival projects in different places. Each of them is confronted with local challenges and problems, but they also always touch on global questions, thereby producing surprising connections. This year Think Film is taking place under the umbrella of the Arsenal project “Archive außer sich”, a collaborative series of interdisciplinary research, presentation, and exhibition projects that deal with our film cultural heritage and its archives. The symposium takes place at silent green. All panels, talks and presentations in English.

In 2019, Forum and Forum Expanded will be using the Kuppelhalle at silent green Kulturquartier as a screening venue for the very first time. From February 8th-13th, this temporary cinema space will also host panel discussions following each screening with the filmmakers and other invited guests, which are intended to go beyond the scope of a standard Q&A and pick up and explore themes and discourses from the films.

The next edition of our children's film atelier takes place on February 24, for anyone aged 5 and above. Moving images in the cinema are magical, as the first filmmakers over 100 years ago already knew. They not only wanted to show magical images, but also magic in films. This was made possible by editing. In CUISINE ABRACADABRANTE (Unusual Cooking, France 1908) and LE SORCIER ARABE (The Arab Sorceror, France 1906), Segundo de Chomón conjures magical performances and tricks on his stage. In Émile Cohl’s LE MOBILIER FIDÈLE (The Automatic Moving Company, France 1910) the life of a new tenant is made hell by the furniture. Later filmmakers, such as Kenneth Anger in RABBIT’S MOON (UK 1950/1978) and Anita Thacher in LOOSE CORNER (USA 1986), were inspired by the magic and simple tricks of these early films and cast their own spells. After the screenings, we will step in the footsteps of these pioneers and create our own film magic.