In this participatory, discussion-based, interdisciplinary six-week workshop led by Mohammad Shawky Hassan, we will examine the history and applications of “fabulation” as a critical, political, and aesthetic practice, tracing its development from its early use in literary theory to its adaptations by Black scholars, feminist writers, and queer artists as a methodology that emerges precisely where archives are broken, traces are erased, dissident voices are structurally excluded, and futures are foreclosed.

This year's Caligari film prize goes to IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD by Pepa Lubojacki. A self-reflexive film on addiction, family and memory, confronting archival material with deliberate estrangement.

On January 1st, 2026,  Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art will become the Arsenal Filminstitut. With this new name, the institution reinforces its future profile and is to be grasped to an even greater extent as a central location for film education, research and a multi-faceted practice that embraces curatorial, artistic and experimental forms of contemporary film culture and how these are communicated.  

There were a number of different reasons for the naming of Kino Arsenal in 1970. One of them was the allusion to the silent film by the Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko from 1929. We asked the author and film critic Bert Rebhandl to look at the film again from today's perspective. The result is a comprehensive research and re-examination.