Federico Fellini (1920–1993) was one of the most significant personalities of Italian cinema and contributed to film history with his very personal and poetic narrative style. To cele-brate his 100th birthday, the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin is presenting an exhibition entitled “Fellini/Mastroianni/Alter Ego”. Running from 16th January to 29th February, it will feature hitherto unreleased photographs of the director and his favorite actor Marcello Mastroianni. Arsenal will show 35mm prints of the five films that the two friends made to-gether between 1960 and 1987.

In January, we pursue our Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective with nine more films, including some, which are – unjustifiably – less known, as well as works made during the Second World War and in the immediate post-war era. Up to 1945, the Japanese government maintained control over the film industry. After the war, the US occupiers promoted “de-mocracy” and “emancipation” through film. Mizoguchi, for his part, developed a radical and acute criticism of Japan’s rigid social conventions, its patriarchal structures, and the oppression of women early on in his career. However, the harshness and drama of some of the scenes in his post-war films are particularly striking – they are the eloquent expression of the profound uncertainty that prevailed in Japanese society.

“Make them laugh!” – The Lumière brothers seemingly already made this appeal their own: the first laugh in film history can be seen in the short sketch L’arroseur arrosé from 1895. Now, 125 years later, cinema has diversified and amplified, declined and manipulated, 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 tension, fear or grief, all these emotions, reach a highpoint and suddenly dissolve in a moment of laughter. Apart from films by and starring great comics, 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 it stems from liberation or unease, bursts out from the throat or ends up sticking there, or comes across as uncontrollable or cryptic.

The Berlinale Forum is celebrating its anniversary: 50 years of dedication to independent, adventurous, daring cinema. A perfect opportunity to look back at the past, celebrate what’s been achieved and think about what the future will bring. This dual gaze - backwards and forwards at the same time – characterises numerous films in the programme. Only those aware of what was can shape what will come.

The new decade begins at a time which has produced a great deal of speechlessness and thus a need for ever clearer words to be found. How does such a present change the curatorial gaze? What is the role of cinema and art?

39 installations and films are dedicated to such themes as migration, racism, sexism, state violence, capitalism, colonialism, extractivism, the climate crisis, fears of the future, the loss of history and more. But above all, they also refer to themselves as being part of the wider structure from which they emerged.

The Berlinale Forum takes place for the 50th time in 2020. In collaboration with Forum Expanded, the section will be presenting the films shown in the year it was founded to celebrate this anniversary. Bringing the 1971 programme back to the big screen offers a way of examining an era as eventful in society as it was in culture. The relationship between the films, their historical context, and our own present day will form the subject of a day of panel discussions on February 27, 2020.

The selection of the 15th Forum Expanded is nearly complete. Works already con-firmed include new films by Ana Vaz and Akram Zaatari and installations by Filipa César, Kika Thorne, Joe Namy, Forensic Architecture and The Otolith Group.

Following last year’s successful inaugural show at silent green Kulturquartier, this year’s group exhibition will be taking place there at the underground Betonhalle once again.