arsenal distribution is releasing AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL by Hu Bo as of November 15.

The film, which received its world premiere as part of this year's Forum programme where it won the FIPRESCI award, was praised by audiences and critics alike and has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals since.

Tragically, Hu Bo does not live to see the success of his directorial debut, as he took his own life at the age of 29 after completing the film.

AGGREGAT (AGGREGATE) by Marie Wilke has received the „Carte Blanche“ Nachwuchspreis (Young talents award) of the Federal State of Nordrhein-Westfalen at this year's Duisburger Filmwoche. The jury members were Alejandro Bachmann, Pepe Danquart, Matthias Dell, Antje Ehmann, Tereza Fischer and Lena Stölzl.

AGGREGAT had its world premiere at this year's Berlinale Forum and was shown at many festivals since.

The films of Eugène Green form some of the boldest, most unique, and most charming attractions in contemporary cinema. Since making his directorial debut at the age of 53 with TOUTES LES NUITS (2001), he has consistently retained his own personal, inimitable style and developed it further: schooled in the film poetics of Robert Bresson, his actors perform in anti-psychological, minimalist fashion, reciting their lines while looking directly into the camera or with their gaze fixed on the person they’re addressing with penetrating directness. Drawing on the full sound and force of language, they celebrate each syllable with baroque enjoyment, even as the form of expression stems from the language of the present day. Green’s visual compositions (for which Raphaël O’Byrne has been responsible from his very first film onwards) move between fragmentation and the intense presence of bodies and faces. With these stylistic fixtures as a starting point, LE MONDE VIVANT (2003) went on to add a degree of laconic, mischievous wit to the mix, giving his works their tragi-comic potential. His progressively materialistic approach to staging was equally accompanied by an increased degree of spiritual content. The origins of his cinema and its relationship to language stem from a desire articulated by Émilie, the female lead of TOUTES LES NUITS: “I’ve never been looking for happiness, but rather for joy.”

Eugène Green was born in the US and came to Europe at an early age, eventually setting in Paris in the late 60s after brief stays in Czechoslovakia and Munich. It was in the French capital that he founded the Théâtre de la Sapience in 1977, which conceived of baroque theatre in new, contemporary ways. From the end of the 90s, he also made his debut as an author of poetry volumes, novels, essays, and notes on a “Poetics of the Cinematographer” (2009).

We are showing Eugène Green’s entire cinematic oeuvre to date, with the director in attendance on the two first evenings: eight features and four shorter works.

The various relationships between Arsenal and Georgian cinema are complex and stretch far back into the history of our institution. Since the first week of Georgian films in 1975, Georgian films have repeatedly been shown in our cinema program and at the Forum, while prints of Georgian films have entered our distribution range and archive. One year ago, we presented a part of this collection in a comprehensive film series and were able to welcome numerous directors to discuss their films with the audience. These conversations with Lana Gogoberidze, Salomé Alexi, Merab Kokotschaschwili, Gela Kandelaki, Otar Iosseliani and Dito Tsintsadze, a panel discussion about Georgian films in archives, as well as an essay about Georgian film history by Ulrich Gregor and one about the history of censorship by Giorgi Gwacharia have now been brought together in a trilingual (German, English, Georgian) publication. It also contains a comprehensive list of the Georgian films in our collection.

The Basis of Make-Up is the backbone of our monthly program. Since the relaunch in November 2008, which turned the “Friends of the German Film Archive” into Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, artist and filmmaker Heinz Emigholz has been publishing drawings from his “The Basis of Make-Up” series there each month. They do not appear in numerical order, but are always accompanied by a description of the picture that serves to comment upon it. While no. 176 in the first monthly program contained Josef von Sternberg’s description of a bedroom in the harbor of Hamburg, drawing no. 1, which called the series into life in 1974, gave an account of a dream: “Writing down the dream after waking up seemed too complicated. I didn’t want to forget it either though, hence the sketch.” (H.E.) Ten years after the relaunch, we are now publishing all the drawings and texts in a special book. The result: a chronology of cinema, presented by Heinz Emigholz on October 26.

The Publication can be purchased at the box office.