„Jeder erlebt den

Raum anders“ 09–19 FEB 2017

“Everyone Experiences Space Differently”

Ein Interview mit Heinz Emigholz in der Akademie der Künste von Christoph Terhechte

Anlässlich der vierteiligen Serie „Streetscapes“, die im
diesjährigen Forum zu sehen ist, trafen sich der Regisseur
Heinz Emigholz und Forumsleiter Christoph Terhechte in
der Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg, einem der
zentralen Spielorte von Forum und Forum Expanded. Sie
sprachen über Framing und Schnitt im Architekturfilm,
Träume, das Gebäude der Akademie und die Notwen-
digkeit von Recherchereisen.
With the four-part “Streetscapes” series showing at this year’s Forum, director Heinz Emigholz and
Forum head Christoph Terhechte met at the Akademie der Künste at Hanseatenweg, one of the key
screening venues for Forum and Forum Expanded. They spoke about framing and editing in architec-
ture films, the Akademie building and the necessity of research trips.
» The interview can be found in English at http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/berlinale-for um/mag azin/inter view-
with-heinz-emigholz.html

In Streetscapes [Dialogue] hast du ein Gespräch mit
dem Psychoanalytiker Zohar Rubinstein in der Kulisse der
Bauten von Eladio Dieste und anderen reinszeniert. Der
amerikanische Schauspieler John Erdman tritt als Filmema-
cher auf und der argentinische Regisseur Jonathan Perel als
Analytiker. War das Gespräch von vornherein als eine Art
Drehbuch geplant?
» Nein. Diese Idee hat sich erst während des fünftägigen
Gespräches herauskristallisiert. Das ist das Merkwürdige an
diesem Film: der Regisseur kommt während des Gesprä-
ches darauf, den Film zu machen, den wir sehen. Da findet
eine Inversion von Zeit statt. Der Film stellt einen Prozess
dar, den man eigentlich nicht darstellen kann. Ich hatte
Zohar allerdings gefragt, ob etwas dagegen spricht, dass
ich unser Gespräch aufnehme, da ich
Angst hatte, etwas davon zu vergessen.
Das spricht natürlich gegen eine ana-
lytische Praxis. Da ihm klar war, dass
wir keine klassische Analyse machen,
sondern eine Intervention oder einen
„Marathon“, wie er es nannte, hatte er
nichts dagegen.
Euer Gespräch kreist auch um die Frage der kreativen
Blockade und um die Kraft, die es braucht, ein Werk fertig-
zustellen. Was hat dich dazu gebracht, vier Filme auf einmal
auf den Weg zu bringen?
» Es sind ja vier Filme, die im Laufe von drei Jahren her-
gestellt worden sind. Ich hatte 2+2=22 [The Alphabet]
schon im Oktober 2013 gedreht, nur wusste ich dann nicht,
wie es weiter geht, und dann ist er liegengeblieben. Durch
das Gespräch mit Zohar ergab sich plötzlich die Lösung,
wie die Filme ineinandergreifen konnten. Natürlich ist der
Dialog mit dem Analytiker der Schlüssel zu den anderen
Filmen. Ich habe den Dialog zusammengestrichen auf The-
men des Filmemachens. Ich hatte 260 Seiten, davon sind
60 übriggeblieben. Die Grundstruktur ist eine Analyse des
Filmemachens, die selbst zu einem Film wird. Meine Ar-
chitekturfilme wurden ja oft dafür kritisiert, dass sie keinen
Text haben, dass sie zwar die Räume zeigen, aber nichts
erklären. Das findet jetzt in diesem dritten Film statt. In
Streetscapes [Dialogue] erzählt der Filmemacher, was er
überhaupt sinnvoll findet am Filmemachen. Insofern erklä-
ren sich diese Filme gegenseitig.
Deine Architekturfilme hast du unter der Überschrift „Pho-
tographie und jenseits“ zusammengefasst. Warum Fotogra-
fie und nicht Kinematografie?
» Ich mache das Framing, und während ich das Bild ein-
richte, kümmert sich Till Beckmann um die Technik, damit
ein durchgezeichnetes Bild dabei herauskommt. Das Fra-
ming ist für mich ein fotografischer Akt: den Ausschnitt
festzulegen im Wissen, was man noch filmen wird oder
schon gefilmt hat. Das ist eine kinematografische Entschei-

Fortsetzung auf Seite 6 ➵

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 1

Sweetgrass by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash had its world premiere
at the 2009 Forum
“Why Did You Bring
Me Here?”: The Films of the
Sensory Ethnography Lab
by Michael Sicinski
somniloquies is a film produced by two people known
for their documentary work. In fact, they’ve collaborated
before on one of the decade’s most well regarded, if con-
troversial, documentary films. So, based on that context
alone, we would approach somniloquies as another do-
cumentary. But is it? The film is based on found audio of
one Dion McGregor (1922–1994), a man whom science
has dubbed “the world’s most prolific sleep talker.” With-
out this knowledge, the recordings would sound exactly
like any other raving lunatic. McGregor variously speaks
about a place called “Midget City;” getting cut open from
his trachea to his crotch (“vivid-section”); an exhibitionist
neighbor named Mrs. Dangerfield; and something called
the “Friday F*ck Wagon.”
In tandem with these strange thoughts, the filmmakers
show us ambiguous, soft-focus bodies writhing in slow
motion, stark white figures against a black background. In
time we realize that these figures in close-up are sleeping
bodies. But they’re abstracted through camera position and
chiaroscuro, so we never know immediately just what we’re
looking at. Woman or man? Elbow or breast? Head or but-
tock? This visual treatment very much resembles certain
films by the French avant-gardist Philippe Grandrieux,
especially his painterly, non-narrative works White Epilepsy
(2012) and Meurtrière (2015). In other words, the connecti-
on between the McGregor tapes and the original images is
metaphorical at best.
Is this documentary?
The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), established in 2006,
has been changing not only the very concept of ethnogra-
phic film, but also the broader conception of documentary.
As avant-garde film scholar Scott MacDonald has obser-
ved in his study of the SEL, part of the radical shift in
the Lab’s approach to anthropological film came not only
from an adoption of certain techniques from experimental
cinema. The men and women of the SEL also chose to pur-
2 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7
Leviathan and the accompanying installations Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with a Hook? by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel were shown at the 2013
Forum Expanded
sue certain lines of inquiry within ethnographic film itself,
ones previously seen as unproductive. The work of Robert
Gardner in particular serves as a touchstone for the ideas
the SEL aims to embody in their films.
As MacDonald puts it, these ethnographic filmmakers
aim to “record… at least some of the sensory elements of
culture… evoking the complex, multifaceted experience
of being present within that culture” (Avant-Doc, p. 374).
This is in direct contrast, of course, to traditional modes
of ethnographic cinema, starting with Flaherty, which ad-
opt an expository mode and presume a basic transparency
of representation. In terms of this problem of the depict-
ion of cultural “Others,” we’ve seen avant-gardists explore
the question in ways that relate to the SEL’s practice to
varying degrees. The films of Trinh T. Minh-ha, Robert
Fenz, Chantal Akerman, and Mark LaPore come to mind.
But the SEL is probably the first collective effort to formu-
late a new approach to ethnographic practice. This collec-
tivity helps define the SEL, and we can see this in the vari-
ous pairings and groups who come together for each new
production. El mar la mar is a collaboration between SEL
veteran J.P. Sniadecki and a newcomer to the group, Joshua
Bonnetta. On the other hand, somniloquies is co-directed
by two of the most prominent members of the Harvard
group, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel. Over
the past ten years or so, Castaing-Taylor, Paravel, and Sni-
adecki have emerged as the foremost film artists associa-
ted with the Harvard Lab, although others, like Stephanie
Spray and Pacho Velez, co-directors of the Nepal-set Ma-
nakamana, have also gained significant critical attention.
If one film announced the arrival of the SEL, it was
2009’s Sweetgrass (Castaing-Taylor, co-directed by Ilisa
Barbash). A poetic invocation of the workaday lives of
contemporary shepherds in Montana, Sweetgrass departs
from most of the rules of good anthropology. Foregoing
explanatory narration, Castaing-Taylor and Barbash cho-
ose instead to enter the flock, observing the world of the-
se cowboy-shepherds from down below. The film works
to enter the shared lifeworld of the cowboys and sheep,
to understand the symbiosis that allows them all to par-
take in a ritualized existence. Following the success of
Sweetgrass, Castaing-Taylor began working with Paravel.
Together they are the filmmakers behind what’s the SEL’s
best-known film to date, Leviathan (2012), an intensely
tactile, immersive portrait of the process of commercial
fishing. Part of Leviathan’s extreme intimacy was the re-
sult of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s use of GoPro cameras,
then a brand new tool. With its extreme close-ups, rapid
shifts in viewpoint, and frank examination of aquatic vis-
cera, Leviathan owed as much to Brakhage’s The Act of
Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971) as it did to earlier seafaring
documents of the industry, such as John Grierson’s classic
Granton Trawler (1934). Despite the significant achievement
of Sweetgrass, Leviathan was the film that announced
the SEL to the world as a major creative force.
Sniadecki has directed or co-directed several of the best-
known of the SEL documentaries, including Foreign Parts
(2010, with Paravel), a look at gentrification in Queens;
People’s Park (2012, with Libbie Dina Cohn), an exami-
nation of the goings-on in an urban Chinese park, captured
in a single take; Yumen (2013, with Huang Xiang and Xu
Routao), a study of an abandoned Chinese oil town; and
most recently The Iron Ministry (2014), an impressionistic
view of central China from the perspective of passengers
on a cross-country train.
Bonnetta, for his part, has worked primarily in experimen-
tal film. His two key works thus far have been American
Colour (2011), on the properties of Kodachrome in tandem
with the particular color temperatures of the U.S. land-
scape; and Strange Lines and Distances (2012), a two-
screen work that juxtaposes views of the natural world, of-
ten through graphic rhymes, sympathies of shape or move-
ment, or complementary visual tone. Both of these films
feature soundtracks notable for their electronic density, be-
fitting his other identity as a sound artist.
In fact, Bonnetta is presenting a sound-based installation as
part of Forum Expanded. Lago is a work organized around
a two-part audio piece Bonnetta composed using field re-
cordings taken in and around the Salton Sea in California.
In addition to taking audio samples of the various flora and

somniloquies by Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
fauna emitting sounds which echo and reverberate through
the atmosphere, Bonnetta conducted an interview with a
man who lives in close proximity to the Salton Sea. He
speaks of losing all his possessions and several beloved pets
in a house fire.
We hear other people as well, but only in the background,
as part of the overall landscape. The visual element of Lago
shows us an individual wandering through this desolate
space, and serves as a rather direct link between this earlier
work and El mar la mar. Titled “Land of Thin Air,” the
video shows a figure crossing the stretch of desert after
dusk. In the midnight blue, we see a hill in the distance, and
a dozen or so tufts of dry brush. As the man crosses this
field, the white light of his lantern is a tiny white dot not
much bigger than a pixel. It bisects the screen at its exact
midpoint.
We don’t see many people crossing the desert in El mar la
mar. This is by design, of course. Bonnetta and Sniadecki
are working to protect the identities of those who have ta-
ken the great risk of entering the United States without pro-
per documentation. But we do see a few such figures, their
features obscured by camera angle or relative distance. One
such image occurs at the 68-minute mark of El mar la mar,
and rhymes almost exactly with the single-shot construct-
ion of “Land of Thin Air.”
Across a flat desert landscape at sunset, we see a person sil-
houetted against the sky, crossing from the left side of the
screen to the right. In this context, we can safely assume
that this person is negotiating some portion of the treach-
erous Sonoran Desert, quite possibly struggling to survive.
But most of El mar la mar isn’t even as direct as this. The
film is a fragmented, multi-perspectival examination of
this stretch of land as a contested space, a place where lives
are risked and lost and multiple interests struggle for vari-
ous forms of dignity and control. As with other SEL docu-
mentaries such as Yumen and Sweetgrass, this is a spatial
study, a work of anthropological cinema operating on the
assumption that intersecting forces define comprehensible
space.
The first part of El mar la mar, “Rio,” is abstract yet direct.
In wavering, unstable focus, the frame is filled with green
trees and rusty fence posts. The posts are tall and thin,
installed at strict intervals, and the camera depicts them
moving quickly from right to left, photographed from a
speeding car. This produces a flicker effect, as if we’re see-
ing the landscape through an old optical toy such as a phen-
akistoscope. As the shot goes on, the road veers away from
and back toward the fence, and we get a clearer look at this
barrier. We can tell from context that it is a fence plan-
ted along the Rio Grande, and that the scene is being shot
from a border town road, most likely in Arizona.
It seems fairly pointed for Sniadecki and Bonnetta to begin
their film in this manner, especially since the river will not
feature heavily in El mar la mar. This is a project that the
filmmakers have been working on for over two years, but
has only now reached completion in the wake of Donald
Trump’s U.S. election victory. So everything we see in the
remaining 90 minutes explicitly unfolds within the context
of the supposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico,
the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign and the key symbol
of his isolationist foreign policy.
Much of the central section of El mar la mar, “Costas,”
consists of still shots of various objects lost along the way
from Mexico to the U.S. The desert is shown to be a sym-
bolic graveyard, a kind of museum in which otherwise ran-
dom items memorialize the journeys taken, or irretrievable
lives. We see water bottles, jackets, jeans, eyeglasses, cell-
phones, and towards the end of Part 2, lost IDs. Each of
these objects corresponds to a person, a synecdoche of loss.
At the start of Part 2, we follow a figure navigating through
the dark with a homemade torch. Almost all we see is a
hand, a rolled-up piece of what looks like burning leather,
and an undulating flame. Later, we follow a man from be-
hind as he negotiates that same expanse of desert in equally
pitch-black conditions. But as he bobs in and out of the
filmmakers’ night-vision, we notice his camouflage outfit
and, finally, his rifle. Within the first fifteen minutes, the
filmmakers have laid out the fundamental conflict of the
situation.
Bonnetta and Sniadecki are clearly on the side of the im-
migrants. These are the people who are risking their lives
for opportunities that some have only through an accident
of birth. But El mar la mar gives the border patrol agents a
voice as well; they are depicted with respect and even-hand-
edness. Some of them express compassion for the people
they’re charged with capturing, while others see it as a kind
of cat-and-mouse game. “They’re trying to avoid you,” says
one man, “and you can see ‘em.” He seems to delight in
the immigrants’ failure to evade U.S. Homeland Security’s
high-tech surveillance equipment and firepower.
Within the context of this battle, Bonnetta and Sniadecki
show us scenes that would otherwise be benign. We’re giv-
en the chance to observe the landscape of the Southwest,
with its pink and purple sunsets, low hills and mesas, and
unique desert flora. Making the most of low-light expo-
sures and the thick grain of 16mm film, the directors ar-
ticulate the Sonoran Desert as a vast expanse generative of
flat, painterly spaces, the sort that Georgia O’Keeffe pop-
ularized. These scenes, together with long takes of trains,
skies, and the movement of water, suggest the influence of
James Benning, another filmmaker devoted to making the
social and political dimensions of the American landscape
visible through broader context.
In fact, the final section of El mar la mar strikes me as the
moment when the film makes its most direct contact with
the vernacular of the avant-garde. We see four shots of the
empty landscape, this time in black and white. The film
grain is dense and swirling and we can see that a storm is
El mar la mar by Joshua Bonnetta, J.P. Sniadecki
» Eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels
finden Sie auf der Seite
h t t p : / / w w w. a r s e n a l - b e r l i n . d e / d e / b e r l i n a l e - f o r u m /
m a g a z i n / s e n s o r y - e t h n o g r a p h y - l a b. h t m l
» Michael Sicinski is a film writer whose criti-
cism is regularly published in Cargo, Cinema Scope,
and Cineaste. He also teaches in the English and Art
departments at the University of Houston.
» Previous Sensory Ethnography Lab works
Sweetgrass, Yumen and Leviathan screened at past
editions of the Forum and Forum Expanded. Lago,
El mar la mar and somniloquies are all showing in
this year’s programme.
brewing here in the desert. Making a sudden turn to the
poetic after what has thus far been a very direct, materialist
film, Part 3 is accompanied on the soundtrack by a reading
that consists of portions of various poems by Sor Juana
Inés de la Cruz.
Sor Juana, the great Mexican poet, is represented in El mar
la mar by lines that suggest both the crisis of a contested
landscape and the human tragedy of cultural misunder-
standing:
“A landscape still unknown
Where night may fall while day is at the noon
in the quietude
of this silent kingdom
only muted voices could be heard
These two artificial mountains
Sorrowful signs of which today
are the many tongues that weaken
the peace among people”
Toward the end of the recitation, we hear lines that seem
to speak directly to the experience of those crossing the
Sonoran Desert:
“The sun-worn traveler
dazed and footsore
no intimation
no sign, of grace shade or shadow”
Although they end their film with the poem by Sor Juana,
Bonnetta and Sniadecki take the title of their film from
another poet, the Spaniard Rafael Alberti. “El mar, la mar”
is the first line of his “Song,” a short work in which the
speaker laments to his father the fact of having left his
beloved sea for the city. “Father,” the final stanza pleads,
“why did you bring me here?”
Although El mar la mar makes no extra-titular reference
to Alberti’s poem, it haunts the film like a secondary quest-
ion, one that’s maybe impossible to ask. Men, women, and
children risk their lives every single day to make it to the
United States. Once here, they are liable to be exploited,
discriminated against, shunted into substandard housing,
and now, under President Trump, constantly threatened
with arrest, deportation, and being separated from their
family members. So once
these brave people have
survived the journey, what
awaits them? The child of
an immigrant might reason-
ably pose Alberti’s question
to their father or mother,
and find their answer want-
ing. What happens then? It’s
entirely in keeping with the
openness of El mar la mar,
and the gestural, non-expos-
itory impulse of the SEL,
that the film’s primary ques-
tion should remain one that
is, strictly speaking, outside
the reach of its own running
time. It’s a question to which
only the future can attend.
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 3
4
Archives provide an opportunity to stop time and step out of it. We
can move away from the present, and from there compare it with
Archival utopias of the past. The site of an archive is more than a shelter
or a repository. Archives can start
moving again, especially if they
otherwise run the risk of disinte-
grating. They can make new connec-
tions that animate them. They can
Constellations

Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7

become sites of production. They deconstruct time and space and
archival-constellations.html

have the potential to narrate the world in new ways – to those who
address them, who must then pass the story on.

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

3
1

9
» Die deutsche Übersetztung dieses Artikels finden Sie auf der Seite http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/de/berlinale-forum/magazin/

12

6
5
10
 7
The Film Archive Between Heritage
and Inheritance
An archive scene: a researcher opens a file and discovers a document
about the life of an actor she has just seen in a film on a Steenbeck. She
is enthusiastic about her finding, digs deeper, puts together her own file.
The deeper she digs, the more familiar the person she is researching
becomes to her, the more alive the actor comes. Later, when she talks
to the head of the archive, she is surprised to learn that not only does the head
1
of the archive not know about the documents and the contents of that file. The
head of the archive doesn’t even know about the actor. The researcher is sur-
prised to learn that not everyone knows what she is finding in the archive, since
the record is there for everyone to see. The head of the archive was supposed
to know!
“L’autre supposé croire” is how a philosopher described, in the words of Lacan,
the structure of ideology. Everyone believes that everyone else believes, with-
out believing herself. “L’autre supposé savoir” is how we could describe the
knowledge of the archive: We assume that everyone knows, even though we
don’t know. In fact, nobody really knows. Or, more precisely: Only the archive
knows. The ignorance of the head of the archive is sur-prising to the excited
neophyte researcher, but it is not shameful. She is not the guardian of the know-
ledge inside the archive. She is the guardian of our ignorance about what is
inside the archive.
Archives have an address. They are addressed to anyone in particular,
and to everyone who enters them. The archive interpellates the re-
searcher: It turns the researcher into the addressee of the archive. The
archive bequeaths its knowledge to the researcher. Research, in that
sense, is always a form of inheriting something for which one has no
specific title, yet which is available for anyone’s asking. The archive bequeaths
2
something to no one in particular, and to anyone.
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED
5
11
by Vinzenz Hediger
“Heritage” is a cultural policy term, of “Kulturpolitik”, to use the Ger-
man term, for after all, it was Bismarck who invented it. “Heritage” » Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is the head of Forum
presupposes a collective “we”: a group with specific features, a shared Expanded, one of the co-directors of Arsenal – Institute
origin, a shared future, which springs from a shared language or eth- for Film and Video Art and initiator of the Living Archive
nicity, or from other identity traits. The term “heritage” creates a spe- project at Arsenal.
cific “we” which lays claim to the unspecific inheritance that the archive con-
3
tains. It substantialises the addressee of the archive and combines the address
of the archive with an operation of exclusion and inclusion. Once the contents
» Vinzenz Hediger is a film scholar and professor at the
Goethe Universität Frankfurt. His above theses were writ-
of the archive become “heritage”, some people have a specific title to its con- ten for the occasion of the opening of the Arsenal archive
tents, and others don’t. But there is the heritage of humanity! Das Kulturerbe at silent green Kulturquartier.
der Menschheit! You will object. Of course. But that still excludes non-humans.
» The 5th edition of the Think Film conference with the
Turning the impersonal inheritance of the archive’s knowledge into title “Archival Constellations“ takes place on February 16
the very personal entitlement to a “heritage” has political advant- from 10am to 10pm at silent green.
ages – after all, it is a cultural policy operation. Once the archive has a
substantial addressee, we can go and raise money to sustain the archive
in the name of this specific, identifiable addressee. It’s easier to raise
money for Das Deutsche Filmerbe than for an archive that just contains know-
4
ledge addressed to no one in particular. But we should remain aware of the fact
that this is a political operation. We still need, not just a “politique des auteurs”,
but a “politique des archives”. And we need archives which contain more than
just heritage: Archives that bequeath knowledge to no one in particular, at any-
one’s asking.
• The Law of the Pursuer by Amos Gitai, SAVVY Contemporary (Israel/Germany) – Image # 1
• Production still of Me and Others by Felix Sobolev (found at Aleksandr Dovzhenko and exhibited at Kinotron, Ukraine) – Image # 2
• Subkultur Berlin 80, archived by !K7, Germany – Image # 3
•
•
Archive Stills (produced and archived by Mosireen Collective, Internet) – Image # 4
Shaihu Umar by Adamu Halilu, 1976 (found at National Film, Video and Sound Archives, Nigeria) – Image # 5
• Ronny und Harun spielen Theater, 1982 (filmed at the Delphi theatre and found by Harun Farocki Institut, Germany) – Image # 6
• Living Archive (Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst, Germany) – Image # 7
• Ivanov Boarding School (unknown source found at the INCA, Guinea Bissau) – Image # 8
• Camera in Gun Forest, photographer: Hani Jowaharieh, 1969 © WAFA agency collection, selected by Subversive Film (Palestine) – Image # 9
• Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams (The Karrabing Film Collective, Australia) – Image # 10
• Rising Stars, Falling Stars – Sweet 16mm, Never Been Kissed (performed by Vaginal Davis, Germany) – Image # 11
• State Film Company (PFN) lab (found by Lab Labalaba, Indonesia) – Image # 12
All images: courtesy of the artists/presenters
Interview mit Heinz Emigholz
Fortsetzung von Seite 1
dung, aber gleichzeitig denke ich, dass jedes einzelne Bild so
konzentriert komponiert sein muss, dass es für sich selbst
stehen kann. Also nicht nur ein Füllbild oder Schnittbild
sein, oder wie man das so nennt beim Filmemachen. Das
ist eine kompositorische Anstrengung, die auch in der Fo-
tografie zu finden ist. Hier kommt allerdings das Element
Zeit hinzu. Die Dauer und der Schnitt, der ja immer ein
science-fiction-hafter Eingriff ist in die Zeitkonstruktion.
Das Framing deiner Architekturfilme hat sich quasi zum
Markenzeichen entwickelt. Architekturfotografie ist meist
wesentlich konservativer als deine Weise, Räume fotogra-
fisch zu erfassen.
» Zum einen ging das aus den Spielfilmen hervor. Die
Wiese der Sachen und Der Zynische Körper haben sich schon
schwer mit Architektur beschäftigt. Nur, dass da noch
Schauspieler rumliefen und irgendwas erzählten. Aber ich
wollte aus diesem Zusammenhang Vordergrund-Hinter-
grund raus. Der sogenannte Hintergrund war für mich
genauso wichtig wie der Vordergrund. Als ich die Schau-
spieler weggelassen habe, konnte ich mich dem Raum na-
türlich noch viel mehr hingeben. Alle Räume haben eine
bestimmte Sprache, und man hat ein bestimmtes Gespür
dafür. Man nähert sich den Räumen an, natürlich auch auf
der Tonebene, und stellt seinen Körper quasi in den Raum.
Die Fotografie ergibt sich darüber, wie ich auf diesen Raum
reagiere. Ich habe ja nicht das Problem der Architekturfo-
tografie, dass ich alles in drei Bildern erfassen muss. Ich
habe eine Sequenz und kann viel diffiziler Räume wieder
zusammensetzen. Du nennst es ein Markenzeichen, aber
vorher gab es solche Filme gar nicht. Die ersten wurden
im Forum 2001 gezeigt. Ich habe die in den 1990er Jahren
6 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7
gedreht und dachte, das ist eine notwendige, aber auch sim-
ple Idee, Häuser zu betreten und zu zeigen, wie die Räume
sich entfalten. Ich dachte, da muss es schon tausend Filme
geben. Aber es gab keine. Ich will das doofe Wort Allein-
stellungsmerkmal nicht verwenden, aber das, was du Bran-
ding nennst, hat sich aus der Logik, wie ich auf die Räume
eingehe, ergeben. Jeder erlebt den Raum anders.
Wenn ich dich mit der Hauptfigur von Streetscapes [Di-
alogue], der natürlich ein Spielfilm ist, gleichsetzen darf,
dann beschreibst du dich als Nomaden, der ebensogut in
einem Hotelzimmer in Montevideo sein kann wie in Ber-
lin, an das es keine wirkliche Bindung gibt. Architektur
setzt doch das Gegenteil voraus. Ob es öffentliche Archi-
tektur ist wie die Akademie der Künste, wo wir uns befin-
den, oder Wohnarchitektur: Bauten sind unverrückbar, sie
wollen eine Heimstatt schaffen.
» Ich habe manchmal Fantasien: Wie wäre es, wenn ich
in diesem Haus, das ich jetzt filme, lebte? Manchmal ist
das sogar eine schreckliche Vorstellung. Architektur hat so
vielfältige Aufgaben. Nehmen wir Bickels’ Kibbuz-Archi-
tektur: In so einem Zusammenhang hätte ich auch gern
gelebt. Aber dieser Zusammenhang existiert kaum noch
oder noch nicht wieder. Was ich interessant finde an den
vielen Architekturen, die ich jetzt im Kopf habe, das ist,
dass ich mich hinlegen kann und sagen: Jetzt erinnere ich
mich mal genau, wie es da und da war. Das ist wie Urlaub
im Gehirn – dank dieser seltsamen Kapazität, die das Ge-
hirn hat, sich Räume wieder hervorzurufen. Das hat was
Beruhigendes. Mich interessieren aber, gerade im Verhält-
nis zum Film, sehr verschiedenartige Konstruktionen und
nicht das eine Traumhaus, das für mich gebaut ist. Und
auch die verschiedenartigen Bauaufgaben: soziale Bauten,
Kulturhäuser, Brücken, Ingenieursbauten. Brücken interes-
sieren mich, aber ich möchte nicht unter einer leben.
Träumst du manchmal Architektur?
» Ja, stark, das ist mein nächstes Projekt. Da geht es um
die Grammatik des Traumes, um Zeitsprünge, um inversi-
ve Zeit, um die Abbrüche im Erleben eines Traumes, die
Nichtwiederholbarkeit eines Traumes. Und Architekturen
haben immer auch als bedrohliche Konstruktionen in mei-
nen Träumen eine große Rolle gespielt. Darauf bin ich auch
im Gespräch mit Zohar Rubinstein eingegangen.
Wie triffst du deine Wahl der Architekten, deren Bauten
sich deine Filme widmen? Ich erinnere mich an eine Be-
gegnung in Buenos Aires, wo das Festival Bafici in einer
ehemaligen Markthalle stattfand, einer Betonarchitektur,
die dich fasziniert hat.
» Vom Architekten Viktor Sulčič hatte ich nie vorher ge-
hört. Nachdem ich das Gebäude gesehen hatte, habe ich
mich ins dortige Stadtarchiv begeben und geguckt, was der
alles gebaut hat in Buenos Aires. Das habe ich mir dann al-
les angeschaut. So kommt das zustande. Ich folge ja keinem
Lehrbuch, „Die wichtigsten Architekturen der Welt“ oder
so. Ich liebe komplizierte Räume, und einige Architekten
können das bauen und andere nicht. Ich liebe nicht die Fas-
sadenkünstler, sondern konstruktives Bauen. Ich hatte eine
Liste von Vorlieben. Die habe ich abgearbeitet, doch dann
kamen immer neue dazu, wie zum Beispiel Bickels oder
Sulčič, die ich vorher gar nicht kannte. Ich gucke mir natür-
lich auch Fotografien an, ehe ich auf Recherchereise gehe,
und oft erkenne ich die Häuser von den Bildern gar nicht
wieder, weil die durch fotografische Eingriffe wie Weit-
winkel so verzerrt sind, dass ich vor Ort ein völlig anderes
Raumgefühl habe. Das ist genau mein Thema: Man muss
da sein, um das zu erkennen. Ich habe diese Reisen jahr-
zehntelang unternommen, die waren mir extrem wichtig.
Du hast ein kleines Team, du stehst nicht unter Druck, und
du hast Zeit, dich auf etwas einzulassen. Das war für mich
eine tolle Zeit. Es liegt so viel brach. Der selbstgerechte
Kanon der modernen Architektur hängt mir so zum Hals
raus, weil all die Entdeckungen, die da noch zu machen
wären, einfach nicht gemacht werden. Es gibt zu wenige
Leute, die sich damit befassen.

Vor vier Jahren fand Forum Expanded in der Kreuzberger

Kirche St. Agnes statt, die von dem Berliner Architekten
Werner Düttmann gebaut wurde, und seit drei Jahren sind
wir wieder hier in der Akademie der Künste im Tiergarten,
die Düttmann bis ins Detail gestaltet hat. Was sagt dir die-
ser Ort?
» Ich kenne die Akademie seit den 1960er Jahren, als
ich zum ersten Mal nach Berlin kam. Das war immer ein
Ort, der außerordentlich anziehend und seltsam für mich
war, in seinen Proportionen, und wie er Ausstellungsräu-
me mit Räumen verbindet, in denen man sitzen und dis-
kutieren kann. Und dann dieser großartige Kinosaal. Ich
glaube, ich hatte zum ersten Mal Filme 1974 im Forum,
da war ich selbst gar nicht da, sondern in den USA. Als
ich dann zurückkam, war das Forum noch im Sommer
und das fand hier statt, was ganz toll war. Wir haben 2012
unseren Think:Film-Kongress hier gemacht mit über 300
Teilnehmern und haben dabei auch festgestellt, wie gut das
Haus parzelliert ist in Räume, in die man sich zurückziehen

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 7

» An English translation of this interview can be found at
http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/berlinale-for um/mag azin/inter view-with-heinz-emigholz.html

kann, Räume, in denen man im kleineren Kreis Gesprä-

che führen kann, und dann das große Forum und so wei-
ter. Dann natürlich die Lage mitten in diesem Park. Es ist
seltsam, dass das Gebäude nicht nur seinen Charme nicht
verloren, sondern sogar noch gesteigert hat. Wo so viel da-
von geredet wird, man müsse Gebäude bauen, die kommu-
nikativ sind. Gerade gab es diesen Wettbewerb über die
Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts, und dann hört man, da sind
Achsen, die durchs Haus gelegt werden, und in der Mit-
te gibt’s dann einen Kommunikationspunkt. Das sind so
seltsam abstrakte Ideen. In diesem Haus ist das schon alles
verwirklicht, dafür muss man keine großartige Achsenphi-
losophie aufziehen. Ich mag auch die Form. Diesen merk-
würdigen rechteckigen Block, die Innenhöfe, und auch das
Auditorium mit dieser beidseitig bespielbaren Bühne. Die
Faszination für dieses Gebäude hat sich jetzt seit fast 60
Jahren erhalten.

In deinem Film über Bickels geht es stärker als in ande-

ren deiner Architekturfilme um die Nutzung der Orte. Ich
habe da deine Wehmut gespürt darüber, dass etwas gebaut
worden ist für einen Zweck, der nicht mehr existiert.
» Auf Bickels bin ich durch Zufall gekommen, weil ich
die Lichtkonstruktion in seinem Museum in Ein Harod so
unglaublich fand und daran erinnert wurde, dass Renzo
Piano diese Konstruktion von Bickels für seinen Muse-
umsbau in Houston, Texas übernommen hat. Bickels war
extrem gebildet, seine Bibliothek ist Teil des Museums in
Ein Harod. Aber sein Interesse galt vor allem den besonde-
ren Erfordernissen der Kibbuzim, wie den Kulturhäusern. nur gehört, dass man die nicht gebrauchen kann. Da ist es
Es ging ihm aber auch darum, wie die Häuser zueinander im Sommer zu heiß und im Winter zu kalt, und die Ge-
stehen, die öffentlichen Plätze, die vielen Theater, die in- meinde betet im Keller, weil es oben zu kalt oder zu heiß
zwischen oft leer stehen, seit sich das Fernsehen durchge- ist. Das waren seine letzten Jahre, und er hat sich stilistisch
setzt hat. Das hat mich immer mehr interessiert: Wie ist wiederholt. Aber wenn man die Iglesia de San Pedro in
das soziale Moment innerhalb des Kibbuz situiert? Für die Durazno sieht, wo diese Backstein-Sechsecke ineineinder-
Kibbuz-Bewegung ist Kultur extrem wichtig. Bickels hat gesetzt sind, Fenster ohne Glas, und dann siehst du es in
sehr erfinderisch an immer neuen Lösungen gearbeitet, um Spanien mit Doppelglas, kleiner aber auch klobiger, dann
das in einem bestimmten Kibbuz zu verwirklichen. Inter- erkennst du auch die Geschichte eines Architekten, der sei-
essant ist aber auch, wie das Kollektiv daran mitgearbeitet ne Formenwelt durchdekliniert, auch wenn sie nicht mehr
hat. Da kam nicht der Star-Architekt und baute irgendwas, richtig funktioniert.
sondern es wurde immer genau besprochen: Was brauchen
wir, was können wir uns leisten, welche Dimension soll das
haben, und welchen Stellenwert hat das innerhalb unseres
Gemeinwesens? Das ist eine utopische Art des Bauens. Das
ist das Gegenteil des üblichen Bauens, wo oft nicht mehr
entsteht als eine Skulptur für den Architekten. Dieses her-
ausgekehrt Skulpturale, ich finde das verachtenswert. Des-
halb heißt das ganze Projekt auch „Streetscapes“: Man ist » Heinz Emigholz ist Filmemacher und Künstler.
auf der Straße und guckt, was da kommt. Da werden keine 1974 lief erstmalig sein Film Arrowplane im Forum.
Gebäude isoliert und als Meisterwerke herausgestellt. Seitdem war er mit zahlreichen weiteren Filmen ver-
treten, zuletzt 2014 mit The Airstrip – Aufbruch
Der Epilog des vierten Films, Dieste [Uruguay] zeigt der Moderne, Teil III.
die Arbeiten, die dieser uruguayische Architekt am Ende In diesem Jahr zeigt das Forum seine Serie
seines Lebens in Spanien verwirklicht hat. Die wirken wie „Streetscapes“, die aus den Filmen 2+2=22 [The
Persiflagen seiner Bauten in Uruguay. Alphabet], Bickels [Socialism], Streetscapes
» Es sind kleinere Versionen der Kirchen, die wir in [Dialogue] und Dieste [Uruguay] besteht.
Uruguay gesehen haben, nur in Spanien funktionieren sie
nicht. Sie sind vielleicht fotogener, weil sie kleiner sind und » Die Fotoserie der von Werner Düttmann ent-
kompakter, aber wir haben in Spanien von den Nutzern worfenen Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg,
einem zentralen Spielort von Forum und Forum
Expanded, nahm er am 10. Januar 2017 für dieses
Magazin auf.

8 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7

What We Talk About When
We Talk About Argentinian
Cinema:
Historia(s) del cine
argentino
» Cecilia Barrionuevo & Marcelo Alderete
1-The Universal
Certain phenomena occasionally occur, perhaps by chance,
which mark a key moment in the creative development of
a place at a particular time. This happened in Argentina
in 2016, a year in which a notable form of cinema took
hold whereby films were made more with aesthetic needs
in mind than those of production, films which seemed to
belong to the world as a whole and not to a particular nation
or country. Or perhaps their homeland was merely the one
we call cinema.
These are stories that unfold across different conti-
nents or in other languages and that could easily qualify for a
dual (or in some cases triple) passport. Matías Piñeiro, for ex-
ample, sets Hermia & Helena, the latest instalment in his Shake-
speare adaptation series, in a New York that directly refer-
ences American independent cinema. After demonstrating
his talent for creating strange worlds in his short films,
Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) by Vladimir Durán
Eduardo “Teddy” Williams released his debut feature El
auge del humano (The Human Surge), which follows different
groups of young people at opposite ends of the earth uni-
ted by how they drift through their virtual lives and banal
realities. German director Nele Wohlatz’s first solo feature
El futuro perfecto (The Future Perfect) depicts the emotional
journey of a Chinese girl living in Buenos Aires and the
problems wrought by geographical and linguistic upheav-
al. Austrian by birth, Lukas V. Rinner reflects on the ten-
sions that develop between different social classes in the
gated communities on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in Los
decentes (A Decent Woman), which was produced by the Jeonju
International Film Festival in South Korea. They also pro-
duced El movimiento (The Movement) the year before, a “gau-
cho”-style film by Benjamín Naishtat that gives an account
of the “flaws” of the Argentine political class over history.
As already said, these films are far from excuses to
make fanciful co-productions willing to sacrifice anything
just to get funding (something that was rife in Argentini-
an cinema during the 1980s, when casts were replete with
Spanish or sometimes Italian characters, who were usually
friends of the main protagonist). The blurring of bound-
aries evident in these films shouldn’t imply that they’ve fin-
ally succeeded in finding a global film language. They are
instead a response to the need to represent an increasingly
complex and elusive world, even as the filmmakers and their
interests remain close to it.
Baudrillard once said with a touch of nostalgia that
“universalization used to promote a culture characterized by
the concepts of transcendence, subjectivity, conceptualiza-
tion, reality, and representation.” This is perhaps both the
wager these films make and where they are actually coming
from, with their cosmopolitan character always being an-
chored within specific places and settings, even as they re-
main loyal to the history that has shaped their development.
2-Generat ions
It’s likely that the unique characteristics produced as a result
of Argentinian cinema’s lengthy history have helped this
trend towards universalization gather momentum, as film-
makers were ultimately provided with the necessary tools
to leave their local surroundings behind without necessarily
losing their identity or Argentinian touch.
Looking back, a plethora of “new cinemas” have
emerged in Argentina over the years, starting with the 1960s
generation, which included directors such as Manuel Antín,
founder of the Fundación Universidad del Cine (FUC)
in Buenos Aires, and extending all the way to the young
filmmakers of the 90s, who breathed new life into a dy-
ing industry. There are obviously many other names, films,
and histories that exist alongside these two generations of
“new cinema” (and their respective filmmakers). These en-
compass, for example, the mythical Leonardo Favio, whose
work only grows in stature with the passing of time, and the
many other directors who managed to make films in their
own unique style and functioned as teachers or guides for
the filmmakers of the future after turning their back on the
industry.
Directors such as Martin Rejtman, Raúl Perrone
and Alejandro Agresti showed that another way of making
movies was possible and that they were not condemned,
or even obliged, to contribute to the prevailing mediocri-
ty of that era’s filmmaking. Those years – starting in the
mid-1990s - were beautiful and fruitful. For a short while at
least, Argentinian cinema not only ventured back out onto
the streets, but also ventured out into the world. The ti-
tles of these films sounded fresh, and still do today, many
years later: Pizza, birra, faso (Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes) (Isra-
el Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro, 1996), Mundo grúa
(Crane World) (Pablo Trapero, 1999), La libertad (Lisandro
Alonso, 2001), La ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001). They were
all debut films that returned youthful vigor to Argentinian
cinema. It was a time when something was truly brewing,
with a new critical scene also on hand to support these film-
makers, while magazines such as Film and El Amante Cine
were able to give these new critics a platform and a voice
and film festivals like BAFICI and Rotterdam were in their
heyday – everything seemed new or about to be discovered.
Time inevitably passed and today the directors who
were once trailblazers for new paths now form part of an
official version of history. Some moved on to make more
commercial films, some continued to make ones more per-
sonal, while others went on to become big names at the
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 9

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spanischen Originaltext finden Sie auf der Seite
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tinisches-kino-heute.html
world’s most important film festivals. The generation ref-
erred to as the “New Argentine Cinema” may have become
diluted over the years, but it certainly left its mark. A mark
that remains.
Since the New Argentine Cinema, no new gener-
ations have emerged that, from the outside at least, were
considered to comprise a group of filmmakers with similar
aims and ideas. There are certain exceptions however, such
as Mariano Llinás and his El Pampero collective, which
brings directors, technicians, and actors together in a struc-
ture where roles are switched without disturbing the hierar-
chy to any great extent, and where the ambitions of some
of the projects may run counter to their lowly budgets, but
never how they grasp the form of art associated with their
production style.
As for the current state of Argentinian cinema, it dep-
ends on your vantage point, as is the case with such fluc-
tuations in society. The more commercial sector, featuring
local stars and almost always produced with the support of
television (or multimedia, or whatever it’s called these days),
produces one or two, or perhaps three films each year that
triumph at the box office, in some cases reaching an aud-
ience of more than one million. Auteur cinema, on the other
hand, doesn’t survive by a way of a single movement but
rather via a broader group of filmmakers who find the
means to produce, present, and get recognition for their
films at the countless film festivals. In both cases – although
not always – the INCAA (National Institute of Cinema and
Audiovisual Arts) is behind these projects, making funding
available so that they can be produced in the first place.
It’s worth stating here that this summary has been
kept necessarily brief and is somewhat whimsical as such.
3. The Present (The Moment We ’re In)
The Argentinian films presented at this edition of the
Forum seem to be associated with or belong to certain
trad-itions, even if these are of a personal or at times even
intimate nature. Albertina Carri returns with Cuatreros
(Rustlers), which attests once again to her unique,
polemical voice. Her name is still associated with the New
Argentine Cinema and her filmography (which has often
remained in the shadow of the huge success of 2003’s Los
rubios (The Blonds)) remains one of the most extraordinary
of the generation that emerged in the 1990s. In Cuatreros,
10 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7
El teatro de la desaparición (The Theatre of Disappearance) by Adrián Villar Rojas
Carri again enters into a dialogue with her own history and
Argentina’s past and memory, this time using the story of
rustler Isidro Velázquez as her narrative thread and drawing
on the most varied of images and archive material along
the way (the film developed out of an installation she made
entitled Operación fracaso y el sonido recobrado). One more time,
Carri demonstrates that cinema can still be used as a tool
to revisit the past and in so doing gives an account of the
country’s current policies, to, in her own words “generate
memories so that one’s own memories can emerge”.
While the name Adrián Villar Rojas may not mean
much to cinephiles (although his medium-length film
Lo que el fuego me trajo (What Fire Brought to Me) showed at
the Locarno Film Festival in 2013), that is certainly set to
change with El teatro de la desaparición (The Theatre of
Disappearance). Villar Rojas comes from the world of
contemporary art and a quick search for his name is enough
to both see that his career is on the up and, more impor-
tantly, to catch a glimpse of his unusual art. Enormous
works made together with his group of collaborators (en-
gineers, carpenters, sculptors, illustrators) form a universe
that blends pop cultural remains, landscapes drawn from
science fiction and whole worlds in ruin. These creations
are usually destroyed after being exhibited due to their sheer
size. Anyone familiar with Villar Rojas’s previous work will
be able to recognize that these are the sort of settings being
explored by their creator here, which seem to be waiting
for some intervention to arrive. If you are not familiar with
these works, however, you can look forward to a film in
three parts entitled El momento más hermoso de la guerra (The
Most Beautiful Moment of War), Unknown Solider, and Una
guerra en la tierra (A War on Earth), where documentary forms
undergo subtle (and at times disturbing) alterations. They
are not, or at least for now do not seem to be, the work of
an artist using cinema as a means of expanding his art, but
rather the work of someone who has discovered new and
different possibilities of expression in cinema.
Adiós Entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) is the
debut film by Vladimir Durán (a young director born in
Colombia and based in Argentina, where he also studied),
in which he successfully tackles a cinematic monstrosity
familiar to both Argentinian cinema and beyond: the dys-
functional family. Drawing on astonishingly precise mise-
en-scène, Durán shows the everyday life of a family and
its imprisoned mother, who is at once entirely present and
totally absent. A whole universe sealed off within the walls
of a house and a set of routines – some commonplace,
some unusual – that mix the theatrical, the realistic and
the delirious to once again show us a hell so personal and
unique it could only be family life. Duran’s film could seem
like a playful nod to the Argentinian cinema of the past, but
ends up as something else thanks to the mystery that runs
through its images and story. A mystery that is correspond-
ingly never revealed.
4. The Future
It’s always been difficult to know what we’re talking about
when we talk about Argentinian cinema. The universal qual-
ity we touch on in parts of this text once again proves that
true filmmakers seem capable of transcending borders and
national traditions by imposing their particular perspec-
tives on the world. Personal experiences are no longer what
happens to us in our own backyards, but what we encoun-
ter when we’re in places we don’t belong. Whether from
Argentina or elsewhere, the best of today’s cinema emerges
from this tension and the strange exchanges and cultural
collisions it brings about.
» Cecilia Barrionuevo is a programmer for the Mar
del Plata Film Festival and co-editor of the film pub-
lication Las Naves Cine.
» Marcelo Alderete also programmes for Mar del
Plata and writes for the magazine Haciendo Cine as
well as Encerrados Afuera.
» A total of four Argentinian films are showing
at this year’s Forum: Adiós entusiasmo (So Long
Enthusiasm) by Vladimir Durán, Cuatreros
(Rustlers) by Albertina Carri, ORG by Fernando
Birri and El teatro de la desaparición (The
Theatre of Disappearance) by Adrián Villar Rojas.
For a Cinema Cosmic, Delirious, and
Working Class
ORG by Fernando Birri
» Cecilia Barrionuevo & Marcelo Alderete

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» There are works that benefit from not
being understood. «
- Simon Leys
Fernando Birri is a very a well-known figure, often more
so than his films. He founded important film schools in
Argentina and Cuba and, after studying in Italy, produced
films that helped shape an entire era, such as Tire Dié (Toss
Me a Dime) (1960) and Los inundados (Flooded Out) (1962).
And although the success of his later work never lived up
to that of his early films, his name continued to be associ-
ated with what was termed “New Latin American Cinema.”
This is a fate shared by many directors, whereby one or two
successful films end up obscuring the rest of their filmogra-
phies. Yet ORG (whose title is now associated with Internet
domains, but which originally alluded to the words organ,
orgasm, and orgy) is more than just a forgotten film. It’s a
film that even seems to surpass the writer’s most famous
work and perhaps even his ideas on cinema. In the words
of Birri himself: “It’s the only film I ever made for myself.”
The synopsis of the film, a truly bizarre adaptation
of Thomas Mann’s The Transposed Heads, gives us an idea
of its outlandish plot (the challenge to the audience: try to
follow the narrative), but merely acts as a kind of guide for
all the many other excessive ingredients that make up ORG.
straints that its reels could even be projected in different
orders (an idea and narrative style borrowed from Julio
Cortázar’s novel Rayuela (Hopscotch)) and its audience could
go out for a smoke or to the bathroom and still return to the
experience. An experimental fiction film with highly original
ideas about the use of sound, photography, and the belief
that madness and rigor could go hand in hand, a film that
challenged all established notions of shooting and editing.
As befitting the times, ORG was accompanied by a mani-
festo that spoke of “coSmunism, a cosmic communism for
a cinema cosmic, delirious and working class.” In short, a
film full of contradictions, the delirious, free and egotistical
work of a realist director who had until then espoused cine-
ma as a social tool and now encouraged viewers to leave the
cinema if they did not like the film, because, in this case at
least, the audience was not important.
ORG remains a strange object to this day, yet it is still
a testament to its time. It feels like a science fiction B-movie
starring Guy Debord, at once incorporating the standard
assumptions of the time while also being a staggering
expression of freedom. After all these years, ORG remains a
mystery about which so much more can be said and written,
a mystery full of contradictions relating to film history and,
to an even greater extent, to its own director’s films and
ideals. How many films can you say the same thing about?

“Some years after the explosion of a mushroom cloud,

a black man named Grrrr helps his white friend Zohommm
to seduce his beloved Shuick; a love triangle ensues. When Zo-
hommm later becomes jealous, he consults an electronic sibyl
about his woman and friend. She confirms his suspicions and,
in despair, he cuts off his head. Grrrr, his black friend, finds
him dead and also kills himself. When Shuick discovers them,
she tries to jump off a cliff, but is stopped by the electronic sibyl,
who brings the two friends back to life. Shuick is reunited with
the two men, but their heads have been switched, swapped (in
brackets: by mistake or not?) and a dispute arises between the
two bodies to decide who will now get the woman. Is a man his
head or his sex? This is more or less the question the film leaves
open.”

There are many other remarkable aspects to ORG: its
production started in 1968 (this is no coincidence) and last-
ed ten years, eight months, and fourteen days. Its producer
and protagonist is Terence Hill (famous for his character
Trinity, whom he played in dozens of Spaghetti Westerns).
Six directors of photography are listed in its credits (includ-
ing unknown cinematographers alongside more celebrated
names such as Ugo Piccone and Mario Vulpiani). It is dedi-
cated to three people whose names simultaneously offer
clues and sow confusion: Georges Méliès, Wilhelm Reich
and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. It also includes archive mat-
erial featuring Jean-Luc Godard, Herbert Marcuse, Jonas
Mekas, Glauber Rocha, and Roberto Rossellini.
Despite everything seeming like nonsensical deli-
rium, Fernando Birri’s motivations were very concrete: to
achieve a state of complete freedom. To do everything he
had been told could not be done; a film so free of all con- ORG by Fernando Birri

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 11

“When we refer to the mood of a person, we mean that
coherent ensemble that either permanently or temporarily
colours the entirety of his or her psychic constituents. It is
not itself something discrete, and often also not an attribute
of any one individual trait. All the same, it is that common-
ality where all these individual traits interconnect. In the
same way, the mood of a landscape permeats all its separate
components, frequently without it being attributable to any
one of them. In a way that is difficult to specify, each com-
ponent partakes in it, but a mood prevails which is neither
external to these constituents, nor is it composed of them.
This characteristic difficulty in locating the mood of
a landscape continues at a deeper level with the question: to
what extent can the mood of a landscape be located within
it, objectively, given that it is a mental state, and can thus re-
side only in the emotional reflexes of the beholder and not
in the unconscious external objects? These problems then
intersect with the issue that is really of concern to us here.
Mood is an essential – or maybe the essential dimension
that integrates all component elements into a landscape as a
perceptual unit. But then, how can this be, considering that
a landscape acquires a ‘mood’ only at the precise moment
of being seen as a unitary phenomenon, and not as its ante-
cedent, the mere aggregate of disparate pieces?”

» Georg Simmel, “The Philosophy of Landscape”, in:

Theory, Culture & Society 2007 (SAGE. Los Angeles)
Vol. 24(7-8): 20 – 29, pp. 26f. El mar nos mira de lejos (The Sea Stares at Us from Afar) von Manuel Muñoz Rivas

Mzis qalaqi (City of the Sun) von Rati Oneli

12 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7

 Recherchefoto für Rifle von Davi Pretto, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von
Davi Pretto

Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon von Tomonari Nishikawa

Philosophie der
Landschaft
„Denn wie wir unter Stimmung eines Menschen das Einheitliche ver-
stehen, das dauernd oder für jetzt die Gesamtheit seiner seelischen Ein-
zelinhalte färbt, nicht selbst etwas Einzelnes, oft auch nicht an einem
Einzelnen angebbar haftend, und doch das Allgemeine, worin all dies
Einzelne jetzt sich trifft – so durchdringt die Stimmung der Landschaft
alle ihre einzelnen Elemente, oft ohne dass man ein einzelnes für sie haft-
bar machen könnte; in einer schwer bezeichenbaren Weise hat ein jedes
an ihr teil – aber sie besteht weder außerhalb dieser Beiträge, noch ist sie
aus ihnen zusammengesetzt.
Diese eigentümliche Schwierigkeit, die Stimmung einer Land-
schaft zu lokalisieren, setzt sich in eine tiefere Schicht mit der Frage fort:
inwieweit die Stimmung der Landschaft in ihr selbst, objektiv, begründet
sei, da sie doch ein seelischer Zustand sei und deshalb nur in dem Ge-
fühlsreflex des Beschauers, nicht aber in den bewusstlos äußeren Dingen
wohnen könne? Und diese Probleme kreuzen sich in dem, das uns hier
eigentlich angeht: wenn die Stimmung ein wesentliches oder vielleicht
das wesentliche Moment ist, das die Teilstücke zu der Landschaft als
einer empfundenen Einheit zusammenbringt – wie kann das sein, da
doch die Landschaft gerade erst, wenn sie als Einheit erschaut ist, und
nicht vorher, in der bloßen Summe disparater Stücke, eine ‘Stimmung’ Tinselwood von Marie Voignier
besitzt?“

» Georg Simmel „Philosophie der Landschaft”, in: Ingo Meyer (Hg.),

Jenseits der Schönheit. Schriften zur Ästhetik und Kunstphilosophie,
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2008, S. 42–52, S.49.

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 13


“Imperfection and Absence.
The Very Conditions of
Desire”
I’ve been asked to talk about film, not moving images in
general, but the photomechanical invention of the late
nineteenth century.
We think of such things as belonging to the past, but an
anachronism belongs to any period other than that in which
it exists, which could just as well be the future. As an artist
already invested in making artwork vis-à-vis manipulating
time, it’s appealing to compound that impulse by working
in a medium slightly transplanted from its native era. We
call ourselves filmmakers, but maybe timemaker would be
more appropriate. Of course there are artists today who are,
quite literally speaking, filmmakers. They mix up their own
emulsions and paint them onto perforated plastic strips,
which get loaded into intermittently moving machines and
exposed to light, then hand-processed in buckets and tanks.
I don’t personally work this way, but admire many artists
who do; the way they remove themselves from the labs and
print stock companies which the rest of us must contend
with. Like living off grid, their self-reliance harbors an anar-
chic urge to divest from corporate infrastructures. Add to
that the magic of chemistry, and they’re the envy of any
alchemist who ever sought to transmutate forms.
To work and think in a medium alienated from its own era
makes me think of Darko Suvin’s 1968 formula for science
fiction, when he declared cognition and estrangement to
be the genre’s necessary and sufficient conditions. Perhaps
the anachronistic task of composing with 16mm partially
explains the interest of so many contemporary film artists
with science fiction, and the work of JG Ballard and Robert
Smithson. I admit they’re important touchstones for my-
self as well. Octavia Butler, Johanna Russ, Samuel Delaney,
James Tiptree Jr., Edwin Abbot Abbot, JH Rosny aîné –
these writers critique contemporary conditions (social, eco-
nomic, environmental) by transposing the setting of a story
to a vaguely familiar or abstracted non-present.
I don’t choose to shoot on film because of the medium’s
predisposition towards sci-fi, though that’s a symptom I
14 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7
At Elske Pia (Loving Pia) by Daniel Borgmann
Deborah Stratman on Working with Celluloid
don’t mind. Compared to many filmmakers, I lack commit-
ment to the medium. I love celluloid. But I’m not devotion- » Deborah Stratman is an artist and filmmaker who has
al. I have shot on VHS, Hi-8, MiniDV and HD as often as worked on both celluloid and video. Her last feature-length
I’ve shot using an Aaton or CP16 or Bolex. Not only does work The Illinois Parables was shot on 16mm and was
each different camera have its own peculiar ergonomics – a shown at last year’s Forum Expanded.
weight on the shoulder or a balance in the hand that pro-
duces a unique cadence of shooting – but each medium » Numerous titles at this year’s Forum and Forum
does too. To me, the varying speeds at which the process Expanded programmes also work with film, primarily
unfolds are seductive. I find film to be deliriously slow. A 16mm. These include Ann Carolin Renninger and René
slow to get lost in. A slow that takes me to planes of figuring Frölke’s Aus einem Jahr der Nichtereignisse (From a
and reverie that diverge from digital methods, which are Year of Non-Events), Daniel Borgmann’s At Elske Pia
faster, more improvisational, spry, almost conversational. (Loving Pia), El mar la mar by Joshua Bonnetta and J.P.
Sniadecki, Casa Roshell by Camila José Donoso, Golden
Quite a few artists shoot analogue and post-produce digi- Exits by Alex Ross Perry, Aapothkalin Trikalika (The
tally, but what it means to work in film can stretch beyond Kali of Emergency) by Ashish Avikunthak as well as
capture. We might also edit mechanically, using rewinds, or short films by Peter Miller, Tomonari Nishikawa, Fern
a flatbed. I suffer less eyestrain sitting in front of a screen Silva, Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy,
that’s rear illuminated by light passing through transparen- Chris Gehman, Duncan Campbell and Bernd Lützeler.
cies and bouncing off a mirror than I do staring at a com-
puter monitor. I like the heat and sound and pulse of the
Steenbeck. I like having lengths of film dangling off hooks
into a bin. The spatiotemporal becomes so concrete. But
I can’t stand cutting sound on magnetic film. It’s awful to
work with only two tracks. I do transfer a bit of audio to
mag just to have something to sketch with, but I properly
massage the soundtrack into existence using software.
There’s a kind of longing that lies in the world of touch;
an intelligence of the hand, of repetition, in the suite of
gestures that joins these plastic bits. I don’t attach value
judgments to the discrete labor of guillotining and taping,
versus typing commands into a keyboard. I just ascribe dif-
ference. In the end, the automatism of process, analog or
digital, embeds itself into the final work and becomes as
much a part of the film’s genetics as shadow or rhythm or
color or plot. Part of the reason I alternate between med-
iums is to bring about a diversification of filmic species. » Die deutsche Übersetztung dieses Artikels finden
Sometimes the urge is reactionary, just to work against a Sie auf der Seite h t t p : / / w w w. a r s e n a l - b e r l i n .
process I’ve been subsumed by and am weary of. Other de/de/berlinale-for um/mag azin/zur-ma-
times the switch is about de-skilling. I choose a method I’m t e r i a l i t a e t - vo n - f i l m . h t m l
 Ride Like Lightning, Crash Like Thunder by Fern Silva

naive about. I’m with Emerson when he says we like to be

settled, but it’s only as far as we’re unsettled that there’s any
In Order Not To Be Here by Deborah Stratman from 2002 hope for us. Or Georges Perec, who insists we question the
habitual.

When you look celluloid up in the dictionary, you get “a

transparent flammable plastic”, which may go further to ex-
plaining my attraction to it than anything else I can think of,
as there’s always been an unintentional but marked predilec-
tion for combustion in my cinema.

And what else can film bring us? Well for one, imperfection.
Imperfection and absence. The very conditions of desire.
Formed by an irregular swarm of grain, filmic images are
constitutionally atmospheric. They breathe. Aerated by mil-
lions of irresolute points, film magnetizes our gaze, which
is evolutionarily disposed to dart towards movement. Film
brings intermittence. By way of the sewing machine, we get
the beautiful Maltese cross mechanism, which translates
continuous motion into one of periodic stops and starts.
Cinema gives us gaps, it remembers through subtraction.

In Ancient Greek, chronos was time flowing past, kairos the

time between, the pregnant pause, the time with potential.
The Japanese term Ma also describes a pause, or negative
space, the interval between structural parts, emptiness. Ma
isn’t created by compositional elements, it’s the thing we do
in our heads when confronted with the no-thing between.
Equal to what is, the usefulness of what is not. An interval
without expectation is no interval at all. The Ma is the thing.
Casa Roshell by Camila José Donoso
There are the intervals of time that come before and after a
scene, or the volumes of space outside of the frame, which
charge it, animate it – the wind in Botticelli’s Venus. Or if
you take the interval between the very first and final frames
of a shot, the distance between those two ends can be what
sets the shot humming, like two notes of a chord, or nodes
of a standing wave. In string theory, it’s the frequency of
vibration that determines a particle’s charge and mass.

Some of these phenomena are nonspecifically cinematic of

course. We can register digital intervals as readily as analog.
But there’s a kind of elemental witness that’s endemic to
film. The passage a strip of emulsion makes, out of its can,
into a camera, its silver halide crystals materially altered by
the light that touches it – that is pilgrimage. The exposure
is physically embedded. There’s no shortcut around this
act of silent witness, and in this sense, filming on film is
stubbornly material, resolutely local, and uniquely political.

The artist would like to thank Pat O’Neil, Nathaniel

Dorsky, Charles Stankievech, Emily Wardill, Ben Rivers,
Lucy Raven and Mike Gibisser, whose thoughts on film
and the interval have stayed with her.
Aus einem Jahr der Nichtereignisse (From a Year of Non-Events) by Ann Carolin Renninger, René Frölke

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 15

» An English translation of this article can be found at
http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/berlinale-for um/mag a -
zine/subject-put-to-the-test.html

Casting:
Camera Threat von Bernd Lützeler

Subjekt auf dem

Prüfstand von Constanze Ruhm

Die hier untersuchte spezifische Konstellation des Castings ten Foucault’schen Sinne) noch unbekannten (Regie-)Macht
erscheint als eine Vorform der Probe: „Casting“ als erzäh- und verwandelt sich so zu einer Allegorie des Begriffs eines » Constanze Ruhm ist Videokünstlerin, Kuratorin
lerisches Motiv und als Methode der Inszenierung zeigt “Subjekts auf Probe” in einem bloß geliehenen Leben. Und und Professorin für Digitale Medien an der Akademie
sich (wie auch in anderer Hinsicht die Form des Making-of) mehr noch als im Verfahren der Probe kristallisiert sich im der Bildenden Künste Wien.
als ein Subgenre und zugleich als deren radikalisierte Ver- Casting als einem inszenatorischen Mittel der Darstellung Viele ihrer Arbeiten waren im Forum Expanded zu
sion, in der die Beziehung von Regie und Schauspiel, von ein Bild der Produktion von Fiktion – und so nicht zuletzt sehen, zuletzt war sie dort 2013 mit Kalte Probe ver-
treten.
Deutungsmacht und Darstellung anhand der Frage nach von der Fiktion einer (prekären) Identität: Denn während
Machtverhältnissen und Selbstermächtigung, Dominanz sich der ontologische Status der Darsteller(innen)subjekte » Nicolas Wackerbarths Casting feiert in diesem
und Unterwerfung (dies bisweilen auch unter sexualisier- in der klassischen Film- oder Theaterprobe (zumindest vo- Jahr seine Weltpremiere im Forum. Der Spielfilm be-
ten Aspekten) zugespitzt wird. Die Konstellation des Cas- rübergehend, im Rahmen der ihnen bereits zugewiesenen leuchtet den Castingprozess eines Fassbinder-Rema-
tings verschärft diese Fragestellungen nicht zuletzt durch Rollen) mehr oder weniger “in Sicherheit” befindet, geht es kes fürs Fernsehen, bei dem sich die Regisseurin für
den Umstand, dass hier der Übergang zwischen Leben und beim Casting zuallererst darum, die für die Rolle am geeig- keine Hauptdarstellerin entscheiden kann. Der Regis-
Kunst, Mensch und Figur über den Weg der Darstellung netsten befundenen Schauspieler(innen) zu “casten”, also seur zeigte bereits 2013 Halbschatten im Forum.
unter Bedingungen subjektiver Bewertung des Könnens, im wörtlichen Sinne “in die Rolle hineinzumodellieren”, als
des “Typs” und der Flexibilität des Darstellers/der Dar- seien sie Material, das erst in einer Gussform Gestalt an-
» Camera Threat von Bernd Lützeler ist im dies-
jährigen Forum Expanded zu sehen. Ausgehend
stellerin stattfindet, der/die daraufhin überprüft wird, ob nehmen kann. von einem improvisierten Gespräch auf der Cas-
er/sie den Ansprüchen einer Rolle genügen kann. In den ting-Couch untersucht er das ambivalente Verhältnis
Konstellationen von Probe und Casting stellt sich die Frage Aus: Constanze Ruhm, „Casting Agentur: Casting As Agency“, in: Ko- der Filmstadt Mumbai zum analogen und digitalen
danach, welche Form der Arbeit künstlerisches Produzie- lik: Zeitschrift für Literatur. Hg. von Ernst/Fleischanderl, Sonderheft Bewegtbild.
ren überhaupt sei.1 Im Casting steht weiters aber auch das Film 21, Wien: Verein für Neue Literatur, 2014, S.21–29, S. 23f.
Verhältnis von Kunst und Leben, von Darstellung und In-
szenierung buchstäblich “auf dem Spiel”. Da im Casting
das Oszillieren zwischen Realität und Fiktion anhand eines
einzigen Schauspielerkörpers und -daseins zur Erscheinung
gelangt, haftet ihm etwas Liminales an. Es erscheint (wenn
eine solche Formulierung denn möglich ist) als der “noch
existenziellere” Modus der (Selbst-)Darstellung und der
Eigenverwertung innerhalb der Abläufe, die innerhalb der
Konventionen der Probe stattfinden. Schließlich ist es das
eigene Selbst, das im Casting zur Gänze in die Waagschale
geworfen werden muss. Das Casting zeigt sich so als eine
radikale Form der “Probe vor der Probe”, die den Weg zur
Teilhabe an der bevorstehenden Probenarbeit – wenn über-
haupt – erst eröffnet. Noch geht es hier gar nicht um die
Einübung von Figur, Text, Position und Haltung: Es ist das
Leben selbst, das auf der Probe steht.
Das Subjekt findet sich auf dem Prüfstand einer (im bes-

1 Annemarie Matzke. Arbeit am Theater: Eine Diskursgeschichte der

Probe. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2012. Casting von Nicolas Wackerbarth (Nicole Marischka, Andrea Sawatzki, Andreas Lust, Judith Engel)

16 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7

 The Stars Down To Earth
Anselm Franke on the Theme of This Year’s Forum Expanded
T
he Stars Down to Earth: this is no ref-
erence to rising and falling stars. It could
refer to the spectral disappointments of
recent years. The Stars Down to Earth: an
allegory of stolen revolutions and failed
aspirations. But the formula that forms the
title of this year’s Forum Expanded was once used by The-
odor Adorno for a selection of essays on authoritarian irra-
tionalism, and a penetrating analysis of an astrology column
in particular. Revisiting it underlines the uncanny timeliness
of this analysis. But it also serves us to question just what
“down to earth” might (still) mean, and what can be an ap-
propriate language for these shifting grounds of rationality
and the dialectics of geo-politics and mediated subjectivity.
Because “Earth”, today, offers no stable ground, and little
by way of an anchoring rationality. As invested in the (geo-)
political as almost every previous edition, the 2017 edition
of Forum Expanded is also an expression of uncertainty.
The topicality of The Stars Down to Earth and oth-
er closely related work on the psychology of authoritarian
irrationalism is striking at a time when the “blatant insin-
cerity”, the “phoniness” and “clowning” of a fascist agita-
tor like Martin Luther Thomas in the 1930s have returned
in the form of a new “post-truth” culture of “alternative
facts”, and when the self-aggrandizement of a self-appoint-
ed plebeian tribune are reminiscent of Germany’s “great
little man”, compulsively enacting the great leader and the
local barber, and the rebellious child and strict punitive dis-
ciplinarian at the same time. Today’s populist rhetoric still
uses the very same devices of paranoic projection identified
by Adorno in a few concise formulas, whose compensatory
irrationality pays tribute to the “logic” of the unconscious
through inversion and conversion: of truth into lie, weak-
ness and impotence into imagined strength and omnipo-
tence, conformity into rebellion, persecution into alleged
victimhood. This inversion serves to build up a phantasm
of identity and essence as much as it acts as systemic diver-
sion, “a nuance away” from reflection and the analysis and
critique of a spiraling capitalism. Even the long discarded
analogies between fascism and the culture of mass media
are worth revisiting, if only to raise uncomfortable ques-
tions as to the difference between decentralized, “demo-
cratic” media such as the internet and the monolithic mass
media of an earlier period, such as radio and television, with
regards to their respective “hypnotizing” powers and path-
ologies. The stakes in creating and defending a culture of
democracy through differential semantics are even higher
today than they were in the mid-twentieth century, as arch-
aic mechanisms of mimetic desire and contagion have be-
come algorithmically entrenched in global technological
“social” networks. Thus the stars – as powerful, allegedly
determining and ultimately alien forces and as screens of
» Eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels finden
Sie auf der Seite http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/de/ber-
linale-forum/magazin/the-stars-down-to-earth.html
Studies on the Ecology of Drama by Eija-Liisa Ahtila
projection for the figments of fantasy and imagination -
have descended to earth. Post-truth also means that what
constitutes “facts” has become ungrounded: when no truth
can be named and raised anymore outside of “social facts”:
the viral phantasms created by contagious memes on the
one hand feeding off outlived narratives, and the false pos-
itivist promise of de-subjectified data-patterns on the oth-
er. Paranoia constitutes an entirely “rational” response to a
world modeled by the paranoid ideas of market ideologues.
The present is not distinguishing itself as a time of
formal innovation, not even in the experimental arts, and
where this does occur, it is not necessarily linked to social
experimentation with the modes of subjectivation and col-
lectivity. A certain conservatism and mannerism prevails,
not only in corporate culture. The far-reaching transforma-
tions that culture is undergoing are occurring under the sur-
face, through technology and financialization, in the deep
strata and deep time of meaning-making processes. They
concern our very nature as social, relational beings. But little
is visible, in the old sense, of this transformation. The new
CGI-hyperrealism conjures up the memes of a stagnated,
undead capitalist “nature”. An increasingly human-made,
and yet abstracted environment confronts us everywhere in
the form of a pervasive communication matrix, presenting
us with mirror-images of past understandings (including
our own “preferences”). And what we see might look fami-
liar, but it is no longer part of the same chain of meanings,
and they no longer serve as cognitive maps of the same
terrain.
The form of critical, self-reflexive, transdisciplinary
art production working in the legacy of experimental cine-
ma, conceptual arts and writerly methods of ficto-criticism,
has the capacity to defend a sense of reality - a reality that
is to be found in the oscillating tensions that characterize
the relationship between terrain and map, between the stars
and the earth. It seeks to produce situated, non-essentialist
knowledge. Art, where it does not deliver itself to populist
affect and lives up to the demands of the present, insists
and exposes the ambiguity and complexity of all visibil-
» Anselm Franke is a curator, author and head of
the Department of Visual Arts and Film at the Haus
der Kulturen der Welt. He is also the co-founder of
Forum Expanded and part of their curatorial team.
Every year, Forum Expanded follows a theme which
in this year is “The Stars Down to Earth”.
ity and meaning-making, turning into a way of seeing and
perhaps a way of life, of survival, of maintaining sanity, of
keeping grounded on uncertain ground. Its mode of reflec-
tion begins not by fixing meaning, but by ungrounding it, by
rendering it uncanny, as it were.
Forum Expanded also does not claim to emphasize
formal innovation this year, neither with regards to the
nature of the moving image nor the cinema dispositif. The
works it presents rather seek to offer alternatives to the ero-
sion of semantics. It emphasizes a consciousness of deep
time and the long dureé: history is the very space of reso-
nance through which meaning becomes possible and expe-
rience defendable, even if this history is as impossible as has
been the case in most of the revolutions and movements
of recent years. The works gathered here act in defense of
language and experience even where they are speechless.
They speak of and out of ruins – literally, from the ruins of
Beirut and Palestine among other places, and the wrecked
ships of colonialism and the migration to the north - as con-
ceptual acts that stand up against the destruction of sense.
The 2017 edition of Forum Expanded is as diverse as previ-
ous editions, but in the exhibition in particular, a theme nev-
ertheless prevails: the struggle for descriptive languages for
the forces that destroy and bring human collectives into be-
ing, the struggle to define the shifting lines of emancipatory
and pathological social bonds. It speaks of the experience
of a collectivity that needs to be defended while it is being
invented, that is simultaneously no longer and not yet articu-
lated, to whom language seems to come either too early or
too late.
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 17

The “Bouanani-esque”
Turn  in  Moroccan  Cinema
» A film that is not necessary, a film that
is not deeply rooted in our realities, does
not interest me. «
Since my return to Morocco in 2004, I have sought to get to
know Ahmed Bouanani and his cinema from closer up. One
major lesson has stayed with me from my studies in the West,
namely that the creative act is intimately linked to both how
artistic production accumulates over generations as well as
the way it’s transmitted. While tracing the lineage of my own
practice, The Mirage and Traces come first in my panth-
eon of our national cinematic legacy. I had finally found the
thread. And once I was finally able to discover La Marche
d’un pòete, and Les quatre sources, I naturally identified
with the heroes of both films and their quest for the key to
the “seventh gate”. Contrary to my expectations, my own
quest to find Bouanani turned out to be almost impossible
to accomplish. By the time I had returned to Morocco, he’d
actually retreated to Aït Oumghar, a small town in the High
Atlas. Those from the film profession I made enquiries with
politely discouraged my attempts to meet him. I was given
different arguments, that “he’s in a terrible state of health, in
total agony”, that “he has a dour temperament and rejects
company, that he’s “drunk from morning until night”, or
that he was “a recluse in a lost hamlet no one knew how to
get to”... The traces of his filmography I found on the web
were imprecise, contradictory and incomplete. Not a single
picture of him was available, with the rare press reviews of
his work always being illustrated instead by his namesake, a
well-known national television host. The first photograph
to surface later on was the one I subsequently gave to the
press... for his obituary! Only one bookshop in Casablanca
still owned copies of his book L’Hôpital. In fact, Ahmed
Bouanani and his oeuvre had almost entirely disappeared
from circulation. Slowly but surely, he was being erased
from collective memory, the very-same cursed “memory”
18 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7
Ahmed Bouanani in the 1970s
that formed both the central leitmotiv of his work and the
principal cause of his misfortunes. My curiosity was piqued
rather than dampened by this ‘deliberate erasure’.
In the meantime, I’d managed to discover Mémoire
14 and Sixe et douze, which were unknown to me, just as
they were to most of my generation. I felt a rush of emo-
tions, anger but also pride. And a rush of questions that I
have been carrying with me since.
Why have I and those like me been denied access to
these major works? Would I have followed the same path
had I known Bouanani’s oeuvre when I was 20 years old?
In 2007, a relatively unknown festival in Rabat finally dared
honor him with a tribute. That was when I was finally able
to meet him in person. His body was like that of a ghost, but
his spirit was lively, and his hand gestures elegant. His gaze
remained youthful and piercing, his memory miraculously
intact. He had no trouble listing, not without irony, the num-
ber of times that people claimed he was deceased! The day
after our encounter, I was witness to yet another example
of this repeated morbid occurrence. I was with the director
of the Three Continents Festival in Nantes, when we came
across Bouanani in the hotel elevator. As I proceeded with
introductions, my companion looked at Bouanani anxiously,
and after fumbling for words, he asked: “So you’re alive?”
Bouanani’s answer was a mischievous smile. A year prior,
the Three Continents Festival had presented a panorama
of the best Moroccan films and Bouanani had been invited
to attend the screening of The Mirage. Needless to say, he
didn’t come.
I had no trouble finding my way into the solitary
realm of the ‘Bouanani-esque Turn in Moroccan Cinema’.
Our shared cinematic affinities played an obvious part in our
becoming close, but the privileged intimacy I was granted
until his passing was more due to our literary rapport. There
was a well-appointed list of celebrated writers whose novels
we had both been unable to finish, a list which defied trends
by Ali Essafi
and publishing market pressures and which was topped by
Tahar Ben Jelloun and Graham Greene. Conversely, we
shared a particular fondness for great writers who had only
written a single novel. As I waited to get my hands on a
copy of John K. Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, I gave him
one of my favorites in the genre, Pedro Páramo. Juan Rulfo’s
masterpiece of Mexican literature marked the starting point
of Latin American magical realism, yet from some obscure
reason, he’d remained unknown to Moroccan readers. I was
impatient to hear Bouanani’s reaction, as he was both a writ-
er as well as an inveterate reader. On my next visit, he enthu-
siastically read out the first two pages for me in his beautiful
storyteller’s voice 1 . He was keen on demonstrating that a
few paragraphs were sufficient to recognize the mark of a
great novel. After that, Juan Rulfo’s book was always at the
very top of the stack of books that lay next to him. On ev-
ery one of my visits, Bouanani reminded me that he always
kept this novella close by. Praise be to Juan Rulfo’s spirit, that
illustrious stranger who sealed my complicity with Bouanani!
Praise be to Juan Rulfo’s spirit, that illustrious stranger who
sealed my friendship with Bouanani! Together with the sup-
port and participation of Naïma Saoudi Bouanani 2 and their
daughter Touda, this was what made it possible for me to
film our series of conversations, in view of a prospective
film. It was then that the historical overview of his cinematic
journey that I recount here was able to be gleaned.
The story starts at the beginning of the 1960s. The
country had gained independence a short while earlier, but
had quickly been swept up in power struggles and the Cold
War’s stark bi-polarization. When Bouanani returned to
» Eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels finden
Sie auf der Seite http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/de/ber-
linale-forum/magazin/ali-essafi-ueber-ahmed-bouanani.
html
 Ahmed Bouanani in the 1970s
Morocco in 1963 emboldened with aspirations and ideas for
projects after completing three years of studies in France, the
country was in the grip of tension. The only option for the
recent graduate of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinémato-
graphiques (IDHEC) was to join the Centre Cinémato-
graphique Marocain (CCM), the only institution producing
films at that time. What kind of films? The CCM was a small
office belonging to the Palace, under the tight control of the
Ministry of Interior. It did not produce cinema per se, but
rather newsreels shot on film that were screened in theaters
prior to the main feature. The newsreels chiefly documented
the activities of the Palace and the government respectively.
In other words, there were no possibilities for an artist of
Bouanani’s ilk to pursue his aspirations. He was hired as the
center’s chief film editor. From the very beginning, he was
under close surveillance because the director of the IDHEC
had drafted a report in which he mentioned Bouanani’s
association with French anarcho-Trotskyite colleagues. In
Morocco, he was immediately labeled as a communist. The
fact that his graduation project focused on Andrzej Wajda’s
film Generation, a Polish director who hailed from a com-
munist country, only seemed to confirm this label. In truth,
Bouanani was never affiliated to any political movement or
party, but rather displayed contempt for politics and politi-
cians from the entire spectrum to the very end of his life.
Bouanani was only interested in memory, his own,
that of his family and his country, and this interest was nei-
ther arbitrary nor an intellectual whim. The drama of coloni-
zation left an irrevocable mark on his biography. His father,
a police officer, was assassinated in shady circumstances as
scores were settled in the final hours of the colonial era. The
tragedy took place only a stone’s throw from their family
home, almost under Bouanani’s eyes, who was merely 16
years old at the time. He did not witness the killing, but ar-
rived on the scene shortly thereafter. From that moment on,
“death had a long memory”, and he was never able to forget
the sight of the “stains of blood on the sidewalk”, which
shattered his “bicycle dreams”. Even at the end of his life,
Bouanani would bring up this dramatic incident at every one
of our encounters.
Bouanani’s interest in memory is also very likely to
have been linked to the disposition of his whole generation.
He was keenly aware that he belonged to an intermediate
generation which had both inherited an ancestral Morocco
on the brink of extinction and was at the same time deeply
implicated in the transition to modernity. At the CCM, his
aspirations and mindset often clashed with the ignorance of
censors. After the national television channel was launched
in 1966, the CCM was expected to provide it with content.
Bouanani subverted what was expected of these commis-
sions to make the films he no longer wanted to put off
making. Tarfaya, ou La marche d’un pòete is the most em-
blematic of these subversions. He was supposed to make an
institutional documentary about the massive public works
being undertaken in the town of Tarfaya, which had recently
been liberated from Spanish colonial rule. Bouanani brought
his own poetic approach to bear on the subject, almost as if
creating a manifesto. The history of Tarfaya was told by way
of a young poet’s quest to find an ancient spiritual master,
which becomes an initiation
Immediately after his return from France and prior to
joining the CCM, Bouanani was asked by Mme. Aherdane
to collaborate on Marrakesh’s Festival of Popular Arts. This
opportune assignment allowed him to travel throughout
the countryside, drawing, taking photos and collecting the
oral history of popular arts before they were subsequent-
ly re-packaged as folklore. He became passionate about the
sung poetry of Sidi Hammou, a legendary Soussi bard. His
research on the popular 16th century poet informed the
parable at the heart of his film on Tarfaya. It is worth not-
ing here that most of Bouanani’s cinematic projects invari-
ably had their genesis in poems, sometimes accompanied
by drawings, before they were subsequently developed into
novels or scripts. This first “pirate” project did not disturb
anyone. Bouanani was not satisfied. One day, he confessed
to me that if the “sequences formally connected to the in-
structions contained within the commission were edited out,
[his] film, La marche d’un pòete would be unearthed. It
was not satisfying, but at least it was there, at a time when
there were no other means of production.”
The real problems began in 1967, when a new direc-
tor was appointed to head the CCM. From the outset, he re-
garded Bouanani as a maverick who needed to be contained.
Bouanani was consequently reassigned to the archive de-
partment and was only able to work as an editor. Bouanani’s
sidelining, which CCM’s hierarchy regarded as a punishment,
was in fact his fortune. Bouanani had had a keen interest in
archives for a long time already. He collected and classified
all the archival material left behind by the French, whether
colonial, public, or private. To circumvent his filmmaking
ban, he began to work secretly on his next feature-length
film Mémoire 14, which was entirely stitched together from
archival footage and told the history of Morocco from the
moment of colonization up to the present era. It was also
inspired by a poem of the same name later published in Les
Persiennes (The Screens).
During that time, he also devised various additional
strategies to get around the ban on film directing. In 1968,
he managed to shoot a short film essay titled Six et douze
with the illicit help of two technicians at the CCM who were
fellow graduates of the IDHEC with whom he had collab-
orated on Tarfaya. Their names appear as the directors in
the credits, while he is listed as editor. Bouanani broke with
convention, however, by making sure that the title crediting
him as editor appeared first, thus snubbing the censors. In
the appendix to his History of Cinema in Morocco 3 , Bouanani
noted: “In a country where the majority of the population is
illiterate, the credits are the least read text in a film.”
Six et douze is an 18-minute black and white essay
film. It was intended as a study of how light and movement
change between the hours 6 and 12 in Casablanca. The film
contains neither a commentary, nor a voice-over, and thus
carries distinct echoes of Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie
Camera 4 . It is what is widely known as a ‘montage film’. The
film’s soundscape is masterful, with Bouanani being one of
the rare Moroccan filmmakers to pay such attention to this
particular side of the craft. He confided in me that he invest-
ed all his energy and creativity in devising the sound design
after he realized that the censors would pay no attention to it
and would be far more focused on the image. In his History
of Cinema in Morocco, Bouanani goes into greater detail about
the origin and limitations of this nominally collective work.
His critique was fair and acknowledged the circumstances
in which it was made. Six et douze is ultimately a unique
document that captures life in Casablanca in 1968.
During the vibrancy of the year 1970, Bouanani de-
cided to emancipate himself from the CCM’s tutelage and
set up Sygma3, an independent filmmaking collective, with
two other young colleagues. With a few thousand dirhams, a
single car and a great deal of ambition, the collective subse-
quently produced Wechma (Traces), which has been con-
sidered one of the masterpieces of Moroccan cinema since
its release. Once the film was completed, one of the mem-
bers of the collective seized the opportunity to claim its sole
“paternity”, thus sidelining all the others. The Sygma3 exper-
iment therefore foundered. In Weshma’s credits, Bouanani
was once again listed as editor, but his directorial signature
is clear, especially with the passage of time. The film’s level
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 19
 After a new director was appointed to lead the CCM, the
censors softened a little bit. In 1972, Bouanani commenced
a project that seemed like a continuation of La marche d’un
pòete. Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa, was a docu-fiction that retraced
the trajectory of the long-forgotten 15th century spiritual
master and Sufi poet, who led armies in the war against the
Portuguese colonization of the Moroccan coast. Following
the liberation of the territories in question, he refused to
hold any form of power, returning to his sanctuary and pur-
suing his studies, teaching, and contemplation. The film was
shot in the southern region of Morocco where the Sufi poet
had actually lived. The cast consisted of non-professional
actors, selected from the local population. When the CCM
inner circle watched the rushes, they rejected the project.
Their principal argument was that the everyday people tak-
ing part in the film did not embody the model of the ideal
Moroccan. Bouanani tried in vain to argue, negotiate, re-edit
the film in myriad ways... But the CCM did not want to hear
anything more about the film. The reels were abandoned in
the laboratory in France where they were supposed to be
developed.
Bouanani was inconsolable over the destruction of
his work, only much later did he understand what had in re-
ality unsettled the censors. He was the first to have attempt-
ed to foreground a heroic figure from the country’s history
that had been expunged from the official annals. Further-
more, Sidi Ahmed or Moussa would have been the first film
to celebrate Morocco’s Amazigh heritage. By extolling such
a figure, the film would have run counter to the official ver-
sion of history. Today, the only surviving traces left behind
by the poet in collective memory remain the famous acro-

Ahmed Bounani in the 1990s On the set of Les quatre sources

bats of the Djemâa al-Fna square in Marrakesh. ➵

of accomplishment remained unrivaled until Al-Sarab (The

Mirage) ten years later, which Bouanani was able to direct
openly, because the ban had by then been lifted.
Despite moving from one disappointment to the
next, Bouanani remained undeterred and on the lookout for
any new opportunity. Throughout these years, he continued
working tirelessly on editing Mémoire 14. In 1971, he com-
pleted a cut that was 108 minutes long. After he screened it
to the CCM officials, the institution’s director rejected the
film entirely, and censored all sequences drawn from the ar-
chives on the Rif War. Bouanani attempted to re-cut several
new versions, but the director censored more and more se-
quences each time. Mémoire 14 ended up only 24 minutes
long. The CCM’s director grew so averse to the film, that he
threatened to destroy the remaining film footage and fire its
author unless he cut his long hair! Both Bouanani and in-
deed the film were only saved thanks to the unexpected con-
sequence of a major political event. Before he could make
good on his threat, the CCM director was killed in July 1971
while attending Hassan II’s birthday celebration, which co-
incided with the bloody Skhirat coup d’état against the king.
Bouanani’s destiny once again rubbed up against the history
of the nation
The 24-minute version of Mémoire 14 still carries
the traces of the brutal cutting it was subjected to. Entire se-
quences from the history of Morocco were ripped out, leav- » Ali Essafi is a documentary filmmaker and video
ing huge gaps in the narrative structure. It is now impossible artist. He met Ahmed Bouanani in 2007 and has played a
to restore the director’s original cut because all the censored Mohamed El Habachi and Mohamed Afifi on the set of The Mirage key role in bringing his oeuvre to a wider audience.
material was burned at the time. Yet the film’s originality and His film Obour al bab assabea (Crossing the Seventh
innovative power remain undimmed. Bouanani subverted Gate) is a portrait of Bouanani’s life and forms part of
the colonial archive material and tried to use poetry to write this year’s retrospective “Autour de Bouanani – Another
another version of history. To my knowledge, it was the first Moroccan Cinema” that shows various films by Bouanani
time that a filmmaker hailing from a colonized country en- and the group of filmmakers in his orbit.
gaged in this form of “piracy”.

20 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7


Bouanani was once again prevented from directing
for a few years. In 1977, with yet another new director hav-
ing been appointed to the CCM, his skills and rights were
finally granted proper recognition, beginning with an adjust-
ment in his salary that had remained ‘frozen’ at the level he
was earning when he first joined the CCM in 1963. Em-
boldened by this positive change, Bouanani launched into a
new project based on a poetic fable. At that time, the CCM
did not award production funds to fiction films. With the
support of a small volunteer crew, Naïma’s talent for making
magic, and materials left behind by foreign film productions
given to them by their friend and set designer Mohamed Os-
four 5 , Bouanani directed Les quatre sources in 1977. It is
a 35-minute short film in which he experimented with color
for the first and last time. When I showed it to him in 2010,
Bouanani had not seen it since its completion! His face was
overcome with emotion when watching the first sequence:
“I had forgotten that the film was a failure!” Like any self-re-
specting artist, Bouanani was rarely satisfied with his own
work. In this case, he had been deprived of the financial
means to cover the fees for the actors he wanted to cast. In
spite of its imperfections, this poetic fable attests to an orig-
inal style that had by now matured. The modernity of his
approach goes way beyond the majority of short films pro-
duced in Morocco today. The story is again centered on an
initiation ritual, the poetic universe of which is close to Pier
Paolo Pasolini’s A Thousand and One Nights, as well as Ser-
gei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, both of which
Bouanani had not seen at that point.
In 1979, he was finally granted the opportunity to
direct his only feature film. Even though the budget was ri-
diculously low, Bouanani did not want to miss the chance.
It was the start of the completion of a film he had started
writing 10 years previously and continued to work on the
whole time. After making a few tests in color which Boua-
nani deemed disappointing, Al-Sarab was shot in black and
white, against the prevailing trend. In spite of the film’s
unanimous critical acclaim and festival awards, distributors
turned their back on the film because it was in black and
white, an “old-fashioned” aesthetic they deemed not easily
marketable. Bouanani’s faith was unwavering however. He
requested support for a science-fiction project that was lying
dormant in his drawers entitled La Barrière. The director of
Ahmed Bouanani on the set of Les quatre sources
the CCM agreed to support the film on the condition that
the lead female role be given to a national singing star who
was currently in his favor. It was that or nothing. In despair,
Bouanani decided to withdraw from the world of film.
He never gave up hope, and his collaborations with a new
generation of filmmakers in the 1990s were the embodiment
of that hope, most notably, his work with Daoud Aoulad
Syad, for whom he wrote and sometimes also edited films.
How many scripts, essays and projects lie stacked in his box-
es? And what of those that went up in smoke in the ump-
teenth tragedy to hit his life, namely the fire that ravaged
his apartment? His daughter Touda, who has undertaken the
task of archiving his legacy, keeps discovering new materials.
The film that I am preparing in collaboration with her will
acknowledge Bouanani’s production in its entirety. In the
meantime, my quest will have at least revived this captiva- Retour à Agadir by Mohamed Afifi
ting cinematographic legacy that was lying dormant in cel-
lars. The films that neither Bouanani himself nor his family
had any access to are finally being screened at film festivals
and national institutes for cinema. Cinephiles across the
world now have the chance to enjoy them again.
» Blissful are those whose memory rests in peace «
says the first verse of Mémoire 14.
Ali Essafi, “La medersa Bouanania li cinéma al maghribia”,
in: nejma, Numéro 9, Tanger: Librairie des Colonnes Édi-
tions (2014).
1 A trace of that storyteller’s voice thankfully remains in his film Les quatre sources.
2 Ahmed Bouanani’s spouse and a pioneering art director and costume designer in Moroccan cinema.
3 A long-term research project completed at the end of the 1980s which no Moroccan publisher wanted to sign onto.
4 Bouanani refers to the influence of Mohamed Afifi, who he considered to have founded a whole school of Moroccan documentary
cinema before his premature death. Six et douze, Mémoire 14, as well as Majid Rechiche’s Al-Boraq and Forêts are its legitimate descendants.
Mohamed Afifi (who should not be confused with the famous comedian of the same name) directed Retour à Agadir in the late 1950s, and
later De chair et d’acier, before succumbing to despair and changing professions. Bouanani dedicated an entire chapter to his work in History
of Cinema in Morocco.
5 Mohamed Osfour is a pioneer of Moroccan cinema whose first amateur film editing sessions and screenings Bouanani attended when
he was a teenager. Bouanani directed a compelling docu-fiction entitled Petite histoire en marge du cinématographe in homage to him, as well as
dedicating an entire chapter to his work in his History of Cinema in Morocco.
2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 21
Revolution

Mythos

Vier Filme im diesjährigen Programm von Forum

Spell Reel von Filipa César
Off Frame aka Revolution Until Victory von Mohanad Yaqubi
und Forum Expanded werfen Fragen nach der filmischen
Repräsentation von verschiedenen Formen revolutionärer
Gewalt auf, nach ihrem Vermächtnis in Kino und Archiven
sowie nach der Rolle von Film bei der Produktion von
Geschichtsbildern.
Ausgangspunkt des Films Cuatreros (Rustlers)
von Albertina Carri ist der von ihrem Vater verfasste Text
„Formas prerevolucionarias de la violencia“ über Isidro
Velázquez, einen legendären Banditen aus Nordargenti-
nien, dessen Aktionen er in einer trotzkistischen Lesart als
inhärent politisch betrachtete. Velázquez wurde von der
Polizei erschossen, Roberto Carri verschwand während der
Militärdiktatur. Ihre eigene Annäherung an den Mythos
Velázquez bedient sich einer Vielfalt von Archivbildern.
Filipa Césars Spell Reel ist das Ergebnis eines
vielschichtigen Recherche- und Digitalisierungsprojekts
zusammen mit den Regisseuren Sana na N’Hada und Flo-
ra Gomes. Beide setzten während der Befreiungskämpfe in
Guinea-Bissau (1963–74) die Kamera als Beobachter ein.
Nach der Digitalisierung des gealterten Bild- und Tonma-
terials in Berlin reisten sie mit einem Wanderkino an die
Orte, an denen die Filme entstanden waren. Spell Reel
sieht einem Archiv bei der Arbeit zu, beim Aufbau eines
Diskursraums für die eigene Geschichte.
Anfang der 1970er hätten Proteste in zwei Beirut-
er Fabriken zu einer Revolution führen können, doch mit
dem Bürgerkrieg wurden die sozialen Bewegungen in kon-
fessionellen Grabenkämpfen erstickt. Auf der Suche nach
den einstigen Arbeitskämpfen und nach Strategien für die
Gegenwart sammelt Mary Jirmanus Saba in Shu‘our akbar
min el hob (A Feeling Greater Than Love) Spuren, be-
fragt damalige Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten, Archivbilder,
sich selbst und die Möglichkeiten des Kinos.
Auch Off Frame aka Revolution Until Victory von
Mohanad Yaqubi spürt Fragmenten einer verpassten Revo-

Geschichte
lution nach. Anhand von Filmen aus der Zeit des palästi-
nensischen Widerstandskinos, die zwischen 1968 und 1982
produziert wurden, erzählt Yaqubi die Geschichte eines
Volks im Widerstand – zwischen Fiktion und Propaganda,
Traum und Wirklichkeit.

# # # # # # # # # # #

22 Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED | 2 0 1 7

Kino

Shu‘our akbar min el hob (A Feeling Greater Than Love) von Mary Jirmanus Saba

Archiv

Cuatreros (Rustlers) von Albertina Carri

» An English translation of this text can be found at h t t p : / / w w w. a r s e n a l - b e r l i n . d e / e n / b e r l i n a l e - f o r u m / m a g a z i n e / r e v o l u t i o n - c i n e m a - a r c h i v e . h t m l

2 0 1 7 | Berlinale FORUM / FORUM EXPANDED 23

 Inhaltsverzeichnis / Table of Contents
1 12 22
Die Akademie der Künste im Tiergarten war im Som-
mer 1975 erstmals Spielort des Forums. Auch in sei-
nem sechsten Jahrzehnt hat das Gebäude von Werner
Düttmann nichts von seinem Charme verloren. Heinz
Emigholz hat es für uns fotografiert. Das 47. Forum zeigt
vier neue Filme des Regisseurs. Ein Gespräch über Ar-
chitektur, Fotografie, selbstreferentielles Filmemachen
und die Emanzipation des szenischen Hintergrunds.
It was the summer of 1975 when the Akademie der
Künste in Tiergarten was used as a Forum venue for the
first time. Now in its sixth decade, Werner Düttmann’s
building has lost none of its charm, which Heinz
Emigholz captures in a series of photos he took for us.
The 47th Forum is showing four new films by the director.
A conversation about architecture, photography, self-ref-
erential filmmaking and bringing the background to the
fore.
--
Die Landschaft ist in vielen Filmen des Forums
nicht Hintergrund. Sie spielt die Hauptrolle,
ihre Stimmung schlägt sich auf die Protagonis-
ten nieder. Vor hundert Jahren formulierte Georg Simmel
seine „Philosophie der Landschaft“.
Vier Filme in Forum und Forum Expanded
beschäftigen sich mit archivierten Filmbil-
dern von Revolutionen, realen wie imaginier-
ten, vorbewussten und gescheiterten. Film konstruiert
Mythen, Filme dekonstruieren Mythen.
In many films at the Forum, landscape is far from Four films showing at the Forum and Forum
being a backdrop. It often takes on a leading role instead, Expanded grapple with archive film images of revolutions,
with the mood it conjures up being transferred to the peo- whether real or imaginary, still germinating or already
ple that move through it. One hundred years ago, Georg failed. Cinema constructs and deconstructs myths in equal
Simmel formulated “The Philosophy of Landscape”. measure.
--
# # # # # # # # # # # Christoph Terhechte
14 Der 16-mm-Film erlebt eine neue Konjunktur.
Filmemacherin Deborah Stratman über die Ar-
beit mit transparentem brennbaren Plastik und
den Zusammenhang zwischen Malteserkreuz und String-
theorie.
16mm film is still going from strength to strength.
Filmmaker Deborah Stratman talks about working with

2 Das vor einer Dekade gegründete Sensory Ethno-

graphy Lab definiert nicht nur den ethnografisch-
en Film neu, sondern stellt auch die grundsätzliche
Frage: Was ist ein Dokumentarfilm? Zwei Arbeiten aus
“transparent flammable plastic” and the connection be-
tween Maltese crosses and string theory.
--
I M
Herausgeber:
P R E S S
Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V., Berlin
U M

diesem Umfeld sind im Forum zu sehen.
The Sensory Ethnography Lab was founded a
decade ago and hasn’t just re-defined ethnographic film,
but also poses a more fundamental question: is this docu-
mentary? Two new works from this context are showing at
this year’s Forum.
--
16
Redaktion:
Vergesst Aristoteles! Der dramatischste Moment Anna Hoffmann, Hanna Keller, Marie Kloos, James Lattimer,
des Films ist das Casting, nicht die Katharsis. Christoph Terhechte (V.i.S.d.P.)
Mitarbeit:
Im Casting wird nicht nur das Schauspiel auf die Anna Schwietering
Probe gestellt, sondern die pure Existenz. Kristin Flade
Forget what Aristoteles said! The most dramatic Übersetzungen:
moment of a film is the casting, not the catharsis. At cast- Wolfgang Martin Hamdorf, James Lattimer, Rasha Salti,
Sabine Seifert, Matthew Way, Caroline Weiland
ings, it’s not just acting that’s put to the test, but rather Layout und Gestaltung:
existence itself.

4
Der fünfte „Think Film“-Kongress folgt dem Leit-
gedanken von „Archival Constellations“. Über Ar-
chive als Zeitmaschinen und die Ungleichzeitigkeit
des Wissens.
The theme of the fifth “Think Film” conference is
“Archival Constellations”. On archives as time machines
and the non-simultaneity of knowledge.
--
Britta Paulich & Ulrike Wewerke – paulichwewerke, Berlin
-- Druck:
Möller Druck und Verlag GmbH, Ahrensfelde
17 Das Programm von Forum Expanded richtet
den Blick nicht zu den Sternen, sondern auf
den Boden der Tatsachen. Anselm Franke über
Adorno, über Täter, die sich als Opfer gebärden, und über
eine Kunst, die eine Sprache für die Wirklichkeit findet.
The Forum Expanded programme doesn’t look to
the stars but rather brings its gaze back down to Earth.

9 Vor einigen Jahren war das Neue Argentinische
Kino in aller Munde. Die drei argentinischen Filme,
die das Forum in diesem Jahr zeigt, sind auf diesem
Nährboden gewachsen. Sie sind so argentinisch wie glo-
bal. Machen nationale Kategorien überhaupt noch Sinn?
Gedanken aus Buenos Aires.
The New Argentine Cinema used to be on every-
one’s lips. This movement was a suitable breeding ground
for the three films from Argentina showing at this year’s
Forum, even though they’re as much global as they are
Argentinian. Do national categories even make sense any-
more? Some thoughts from Buenos Aires.
--
Anselm Franke on Adorno, perpetrators who behave like
victims and art that finds a language to articulate reality.
--
18 Ahmed Bouanani musste seine Vision eines
künstlerischen marokkanischen Kinos gegen
zahllose Widerstände durchsetzen. Er schuf nur
einen Spielfilm und wenige Kurzfilme, doch sein Einfluss
wirkt bis heute. Ali Essafi beschreibt die Odyssee des
Filmpioniers und seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart.
Ahmed Bouanani faced numerous problems in get-
ting across his vision of an artistic Moroccan cinema. He
made only one feature and a handful of shorts, yet his in-
fluence is still considerable. Ali Essafi describes the odys-
sey of this cinematic pioneer and his significance for today.
--
Das Internationale Forum des Jungen Films ist eine Veranstaltung des
Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. im Rahmen der Inter-
nationalen Filmfestspiele Berlin. Ein Geschäftsbereich der Kultur-
veranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (KBB) GmbH.
Internationales Forum des Jungen Films
Potsdamer Str. 2, 10785 Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0) 30 269 55 200 / Fax: +49 (0) 30 269 55 222
Email: forum@arsenal-berlin.de
www.arsenal-berlin.de/forum
facebook.com/berlinaleforum
@BerlinaleForum
Für die großzügige Unterstützung danken wir Möller Druck und
Verlag GmbH (Ahrensfelde b. Berlin).

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