The next event of our children's film atelier takes place on January 20, for everyone aged 5 and above.

A different take on witching hour.: When in SPOOK SPORT (USA 1939) the witching hour sounds, brightly colored ghosts perform a uplifting ballet. And ghosts don’t only come out at night: There’s a practical joke involving mirrors in AH! LA BARBE (A Funny Shave, F 1905), and in A CHAIRY TALE (Canada 1957) a chair resists a man’s attempts to approach it. Witches also come out in daylight in BEWITCHED MATCHES (Les Allumettes Ensourcelees, F 1903) when some matches are brought to life and made to perform. In the stencil color MME CROQUEMITAINE (The Wicked Witch, F 1909), a witch transforms children into huge vegetables. VORMITTAGSSPUK (Ghosts Before Breakfast, G 1928) manages to go off the rails without the help of ghosts or witches: Hats fly through the air, crockery smashes and repairs itself… At 12 o’clock it’s all over.

Arsenal is putting on the Forum as part of the Berlinale for the 49th time. The main programme consists of 39 films, 31 of which world premieres. This year’s Special Screenings are entitled “Archival Constellations” and will be announced in a second press release.

The Forum 2019 main programme doesn’t consider itself some sort of ‘best of’ list, but rather gathers together a selection of films that try things out, take a stance and refuse to compromise. Some look back at the history of the 20th century, while others focus on what’s to come, even as they remain anchored in the here and now. Numerous films take the written word as their starting point, drawing on or making explicit reference to literature or working with letters, poems and other writings.

At a time when moving images are ubiquitous, transgressing media boundaries, if we can even still call it that, is defined by other parameters. Tensions between mainstream and underground, narrative cinema and avant-garde, art and cinema seem largely to have been dissolved. Today, the overriding questions are more and more about the relation of images to the real.

The 14th Forum Expanded is showing 30 short and long films, 17 installation works, and a performance that point to life outside the echo chamber that we find ourselves in, and not just in social media.