Muito Romântico / Forum Expanded 2016 DEU/BRA 2016 DIRECTOR: Melissa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn © Distruktur

The Forum Expanded team has now finished the selection process for this year’s programme. 49 artistic works have been invited, including 32 films of different lengths, 15 installations, one lecture performance and a reading. The exhibition at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg will open on February 10 already, one day before the Berlinale gets underway. The premiere screenings of the film programmes will take place in the auditorium of the same location and will be followed by comprehensive discussions. The central thread here is this year’s theme of “Traversing the Phantasm”, which art theorist Helmut Draxler will introduce in a keynote lecture. In reference to theoretician Jacques Lacan, the concept of the phantasm is reflected in numerous ways in this year’s programme – as collective fantasies or (geo-)political realities of various different manifestations.

The works shown in the film programmes and the exhibitions set themselves the task of not just depicting such phantasms but also working their way through them. Subjects such as war, national statehood, arms exports, forced migration or capitalism are investigated as components of ideology and mythology using the language of cinema. The reference points here include genres such as science fiction (Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind, Clemens von Wedemeyer), war (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson) or horror films (Anja Kirschner), Egyptian film and media history (Heba Amin, Islam Kamal, Mayye Zayed) as well as the work of directors such as Yvonne Rainer (Kerstin Schroedinger), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Anja Kirschner), Michelangelo Antonioni (Volker Sattel), Alain Resnais, Chris Marker (Joe Namy, Clemens von Wedemeyer), Ingmar Bergman (Maged Nader) or Jack Smith (Marie Losier). Museum and exhibition culture (Assad Gruber, Hila Peleg), the history of sculptures and monuments (Heinz Emigholz, Ahmad Ghossein, Joe Namy) or art concepts such as Lettrism (Mika Taanila) equally flow into new forms of expression within which the artists then position themselves.

Several of the films showing in the programme make reference to films that form part of the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art collection. The Forum programme also generates such references, just as some films in the archive stem from the festival programmes of the last decades. A list of such “reference films” available in the Arsenal archive as analogue prints will be published at the start of the festival. These films can then be viewed on editing tables in the newly set-up Arsenal screening facilities at silent green Kulturquartier.

An installation of the digital version of a Japanese short film will also be presented there that was shown at the Forum in 1984: Xénogénèse by Morishita Akihiko shows a man steadily disappearing behind  scratches that run through the entire film. Due to the way the film was made, a new print could not be struck directly, as the scratches must be added by the filmmaker by hand. A newly produced analogue print will now receive its premiere as part of the Forum. 

Film history will also be re-staged in the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada: in her 1969 film Reason over Passion / La Raison Avant la Passion, Joyce Wieland explores a famous sentence uttered by Canadian prime minister of the time Pierre Trudeau.

Film archives are also expressions of phantasms: what is collected there, how is it ordered and for what purpose? In keeping with last year’s “Visionary Archive” programme, film collections will be presented that grew out of specific moments in history: Afghan films which had to remain unfinished; films left behind by the Soviet Cultural Institute in Jordan; Indonesian propaganda films stored in an abandoned film lab in Jakarta; a batch of Nigerian films produced in the period following British colonial rule; films produced for a specific market, such as VHS productions in Cyprus; or films and videos that reveal violence and the exercise of power, such as in the former Yugoslavia or in the Palestinian Territories.

The Visionary Archives presentations will be taking place daily in the foyer of the Akademie der Künste from February 13 onwards at 11.00 am.

The Prinzessinnengärten bar and the b_books bookstore will once again be on hand in the atrium of the Filmhaus at Potsdamer Platz.

Films

A Boy Needs a Friend by Steve Reinke (Canada / USA)

Abu Ammar is Coming by Naeem Mohaiemen (Bangladesh / Lebanon / United Kingdom)

Al Marhala Al Rabiaa (The Fourth Stage) by Ahmad Ghossein (Lebanon / United Arab Emirates)

Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson (Canada)

Bunker Drama by Mike Crane (USA / Lithuania)

The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun by Anton Vidokle (USA / Kazakhstan)

Continuity by Omer Fast (Germany)

La Cupola by Volker Sattel (Germany)

ESIOD 2015 by Clemens von Wedemeyer (Austria / Germany)

Expired by Islam Kamal (Egypt)

Fathy La Yaeesh Hona Baad Ala'n (Fathy Doesn't Live Here Anymore) by Maged Nader (Egypt)

From the Notebook of... by Robert Beavers (USA)

Fugue by Kerstin Schroedinger (Germany)

The Illinois Parables by Deborah Stratman (USA)

In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain by Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind (Palestinian Territories / Denmark / United Kingdom / Qatar)

Invention by Mark Lewis (Canada / United Kingdom)

Kama Tohalleq al Teyour (As Birds Flying) by Heba Amin (Egypt)

The Lamps by Shelly Silver (USA)

Le Corbusier [IIIII] Asger Jorn [Relief] by Heinz Emigholz (Germany / Denmark)

Mannerlaatta (Tectonic Plate) by Mika Taanila (Finland)

Moderation by Anja Kirschner (Greece / Italy / Egypt / United Kingdom)

Muito Romântico by Melissa Dullius, Gustavo Jahn (Germany / Brazil)

Now: End of Season by Ayman Nahle (Lebanon)

O Pássaro da Noite by Marie Losier (Portugal / France)

The Right by Assaf Gruber (Germany / Poland)

Ruina by Gabraz Sanna (Brazil)

Sign Space by Hila Peleg (Germany)

Stones Gods People by Joe Namy (Lebanon)

Transmission from the Liberated Zones by Filipa César (Portugal / France / Germany)

Wadee'at tasallul (Offside) by Marwan Hamdan (Lebanon)

We Demand by Claudrena N. Harold/Kevin Jerome Everson (USA)

Zakerat Abad El Shams (A Stroll Down Sunflower Lane) by Mayye Zayed (Egypt)

Performance

When the Ventriloquist Came and Spoke to Me by Ahmad Ghossein (Lebanon)

Reading

The Hanging Garden of Sleep by Haytham El-Wardany (Germany / Egypt)

Exhibitions

Akademie der Künste at Hanseatenweg:

A Mina dos Vagalumes by Raphaël Grisey (France / Brazil)

Chao ju zuo yong (Action at a Distance) by Yin-Ju Chen (Taiwan)

BBR 1 – No. 1 of Blossom Bud Restrainer by Liu Chuang (People's Republic of China)

Girl Talk by Wu Tsang (USA)

Hygiene / Swachh by Pushpamala N. (India)

Mleeta by Sandra Schäfer (Germany)

The Pink Detachment by Jen Liu (USA)

Kartoshka (Potato) by Lyusya Matveeva (Russian Federation)
pssst Leopard 2A7+ by Natascha Sadr Haghighian (Germany)

Les oxymores de la raison by Kader Attia (France)

The Refrain by Angela Melitopoulos, with the participation of Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela Anderson and Aya Hanabusa (Germany / South Korea)

Safe Disassembly by Andreas Bunte (Germany / Norway)

Terra Nullius or: How to be a Nationalist by James T. Hong (People's Republic of China / Taiwan / South Korea)

Embassy of Canada – Marshall McLuhan Salon:

Reason over Passion / La Raison Avant la Passion by Joyce Wieland (Canada)

silent green Kulturquartier:

Xénogénèse by Akihiko Morishita (Japan)

Lectures, Panels and Discussions

Traversing the Phantasm Keynote Lecture

Helmut Draxler (Berlin)

Traversing Phantasms with NAAS ناس | Network of Arab Arthouse Screens

Co-hosted with Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre (Cairo)

Visionary Archives

The Unbelievable Photos Taken by the Crazy Russians Who Illegally Climbed Egypt’s Great Pyramid – Ala Younis (Jordan)

Rotting Away Behind Locked Doors – Edwin (Indonesia)

Reclaiming History, Unveiling Memory – Didi Cheeka (Nigeria)

Zmeđu Nas/Between Us – An Open Archive Project at the Library Hamdija Kreševljaković – Video Arhiv, Sarajevo – Clarissa Thieme (Germany), Nihad Kreševljaković (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Hannibal in Rafah: A Reconstruction of One Bloody Day in the 2014 Gaza War from User Generated Videos – Eyal Weizman (United Kingdom)

VHS Cyprus: A Lost History – Constantinos Taliotis (Cyprus)

What We Left Unfinished – Mariam Ghani (USA), Latif Ahmadi (Afghanistan)