42 artists, filmmakers, performers and musicians from 16 countries will present cinematic works in exhibitions, screenings, radio broadcasts and on stage.

Parallel Worlds is the title of an exhibition at Salon Populaire (Kunstsaele Berlin) about the ability of images to create connections between worlds and thereby merge with them, set them in motion or detach themselves from them. The exhibition is also about the autonomy of images and their historical life span.

The focus of Parallel Worlds captures the motivation of most of the works in this year's programme - the search for experimental artistic approaches to exploring reality, rewriting history or designing a utopia.

In addition to short and feature-length films, the 2011 edition of Forum Expanded includes Screen Off, a programme of sound works on Deutschlandradio Kultur, video interviews with Festival guests on the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland / JRMiP by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana, as well as panel discussions on the contemporary relationship between politics and aesthetics.

Das schlafende Mädchen by the Berlin artist Rainer Kirberg will be presented as a world premiere. This experimental black and white film tells the story of Hans, an art student studying under Joseph Beuys, who loses himself in the relationship with Ruth, the key "motif" of a video piece he is working on.

The series History Lessons will show films and host discussions on the question of how cinematic legacy is passed on and what, in fact, film legacy can be understood to be. This encompasses institutions and archives as well as the legacy of a political or artistic practice and of images as such.

At the Canadian Embassy and the Filmhaus, we will be presenting a selection of Hauntings - videos about ghosts and the history of film shot by Guy Maddin that were commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival. 

Annika Larsson's new video installation, BLIND, will be shown at Potsdamer Straße 88. The subject of the work is blind football and plays with the dynamics of seeing and not seeing.

The closing event will be a concert by Genesis Breyer O-Porridge, Tony Conrad and Morrison Edley in the HAU theatre.

Exhibitions

Salon Populaire (Kunstsaele Berlin): Parallel Worlds with Basma Alsharif (Palestine), Yael Bartana (Israel), James Benning (USA), Tom Holert (Germany), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Netherlands), Harald Thys/Jos de Gruyter (Belgium)

Potsdamer Strasse 88: Annika Larsson (Sweden)

Canadian Embassy - Marshall McLuhan Salon and Filmhaus: Guy Maddin (Canada)

Filmhaus: Ryosuke Nishida / Kyohei Yamashita (Japan), Kika Thorne (Canada)

Screenings

Geographies of the Other Power I:

Patty Chang (USA), Mohammadreza Farzad (Iran), Zacharias Kunuk (Canada), Eléonore de Montesquiou (Estonia)

Geographies of the Other Power II:

Adriana Salazar Arroyo (Costa Rica), René Frölke (Germany), Raphël Grisey (France)

Noise Margins:

Eva Heldmann (Germany), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (USA), Paul Rowley/David Phillips/Tim Blue (USA), Pawel Wojtasik (USA)

Feature-length films by Rainer Kirberg (Germany), Markus Ruff (Germany), Santiago Sierra (Spain), Lawrence Weiner (USA)

Studio

We Will Be Strong In Our Weakness: interviews about a movement by Yael Bartana (Israel) with Camilla Nielsson (Denmark), Susanne Sachsse (Germany), Marc Siegel (USA) and many Festival guests

Radio

Cinematic sound works by Tony Conrad (USA), Keren Cytter (Israel), Dani Gal (Israel)/Achim Lengerer (Germany), Natascha Sadr Haghighian (Germany)

Stage

Pierre Huyghe (France), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge/ Tony Conrad/ Morrison Edley (USA)

History Lessons

with films by Barbara Hammer (USA)/Gina Carducci (USA), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (USA), Brian Tilley (South Africa)/Lawrence Dwerkin (South Africa)

and discussions with Basma Alsharif (Lebanon), Kathrin Becker (Germany), Dani Gal (Israel), Claus Löser (Germany), Jonas Mekas (USA), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Netherlands), Constanze Ruhm (Austria), Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Germany), Marc Siegel (USA), P. Adams Sitney (USA), Hito Steyerl (Germany), Brian Tilley (South Africa)

Talks

with Basma Alsharif (Palestine), James Benning (USA), Heinz Emigholz (Germany), Anselm Franke (Germany), Carl Hegemann (Germany), Tom Holert (Germany), Francis Kéré (Burkina Faso), Irina Leimbacher (USA), Matthias Lilienthal (Germany), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Netherlands), Volker Sattel (Germany), Georg Seeßlen (Germany), Kika Thorne (Canada), Artur Zmijewski (Poland)

A Bar Ist A Garden Ist A café Ist A Reading Room in the Filmhaus foyer: Kika Thorne (Canada), Prinzessinnengarten (Germany), b_books (Germany)