arsenal distribution is releasing EL MAR LA MAR by Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki from June 7, accompanied by the Caligari Award tour. The film, a cinematographic exploration of the Sonora desert between Mexico and the United States, premiered as part of the 2017 Forum, where it received the Caligari Award. It masterfully weaves together 16 mm shots of nature and weather phenomena, animals, people and the tracks they leave behind with a polyphonic soundtrack, creating a multi-faceted panorama of a highly politicised stretch of land, a film poem that conjures up the ocean.

The “re-selected” project will be presented at the 64th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen on 4th May. It is a joint project with Arsenal as part of “Archive außer sich”.

re-selected has taken three years to follow up on a perhaps unfashionable intuition: At the designated “end of the analogue era”, the project will devote itself to select films from the Short Film Festival’s analogue stock and examine film history as a history of individual film prints. Examining the particularities of a print throws up questions to do with a concrete development, with local audiences and historical constellations. What does the existence of a print in a particular place mean? Where and when was a film screened? Who saw it? What version? In what state? When special attention is given to a pool of about 80 films archived at Oberhausen and Arsenal, then it’s also a question of the curatorial practices of these two institutions and their impact over the years. Between now and 2020, there will be events of different formats, not only in Oberhausen and Berlin, but in other places that are connected to the impact of the concrete prints. The plan is for the project to close with a publication that will formulate experiences and results as a contribution to the writing of film history in the post-analogue age.