"Make them laugh!" – The Lumière brothers seemingly already made this appeal their own: the first laughter in film history can be seen in the short sketch L'arroseur arrosé (or also Le jardinier), one of ten short films from the 1895 Grand Café program, the first very public film screening worldwide that was held at the Indian Salon in Paris. What we have no record of is whether the audience members present reacted to this first comedy short by laughing themselves or whether the entire screening wasn't accompanied by laughter of wonder and disbelief at the technical miracle of the moving image. 122 years later, cinema has diversified and amplified laughter, run through all its possible categories and pushed it in infinite different directions. We no longer just laugh at comedies – pars pro toto, one can mention here the classical "comic relief", when feelings of tension, fear, or sadness reach their highpoint and suddenly dissolve in a moment of laughter. Several of these huge varied forms of laughter in film and cinema and the equally wide-ranging ways it is produced and interpreted are being presented in December's Magical History Tour. Moving away from films by and with the comic greats and possible classics of the genre, the program also turns its attention to the apparent (no less amusing) byways of film history and all the many variations of the laugh, whether that which stems from liberation or unease, bursts out of the throat or ends up sticking there, or comes across as uncontrollable or cryptic.

Berlin and Los Angeles have been twin cities for 50 years now. In both cities, numerous events have been held to celebrate this anniversary, with a film series by the UCLA Film & Television Archive set up by the Deutsche Kinemathek bringing the year of festivities to close. As both institutions work together closely as members of the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), it made perfect sense to commemorate the city partnership by exchanging film programs. Ten films from and about Berlin thus travelled to Los Angeles this autumn and were shown at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood, while the return visit to Berlin now follows in December with ten films from the UCLA's expansive collection, curated by the head of its film archive Jan-Christopher Horak.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive emerged from collection activities that started up in 1964 and have since made the archive into the second biggest film archive in the US after the Library of Congress. Its collection of nitro films made by the Hollywood majors is unique, as are its massive holdings of source material from Hearst Metrotone News, which contain documentary footage from the period from 1915 to 1975. Under the long-term aegis of Robert Gitt, the UCLA carried out pioneering film restoration work in terms of how to deal with early color systems and to create authentic seeming security copies of important films in American film history.

Arsenal is presenting current films from France as part of the French Film Week that have received a great deal of international attention but have unfortunately yet to find distribution in Germany. The focus is on five outstanding works of French cinema from 2013-17 made by artistically uncompromising female filmmakers: Pascale Breton, Léonor Serraille, Claire Simon, Rebecca Zlotowski, and Valérie Massadian, who will be our guest for the German premiere of her film MILLA, which recently picked up prizes at Locarno and other festivals. All five titles have English subtitles and are being shown in Berlin for the first time.