Intro

9 – 19 February

The Forum Expanded curatorial team has now completed the 2017 selection. 44 artistic works from a total of 21 countries have been invited, including 28 films of various lengths, 15 installations and a performance. The opening of the group exhibition at the Akademie der Künste at the Hanseatenweg already takes place on February 8, one day before the start of the Berlinale. 13 video and sound installations are being shown there, once again supplemented by film screenings from February 10 onwards. SAVVY Contemporary present the exhibition „The Law of the Pursuer“ by Amos Gitai and the multichannel sound installation Lago by Joshua Bonnetta is being exhibited at the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada.

Sharon Lockhart’s Rudzienko celebrates its world premiere in the film programme. Lockhart examines a recurring theme of her artistic practice in this new work: the experience of childhood and adolescence. For a period of three years, she worked with the inhabitants of the Youth Centre for Sociotherapy in Rudzienko, Poland. Milena is one of the girls featured, who Lockhart met while shooting Podwórka (Forum Expanded 2010). The film emerged from the work with the teenagers and shows a mixture of conversations which deal with everyday teenager worries and philosophical questions in equal measure.

Works by other artists invited to the programme also forge links to films and installations previously shown at Forum Expanded and the Forum: Noam Enbar presents the installation Pana Ha’Geshem (The Rain is Gone) in which a theatre group performs a structured, improvised vocal composition. The installation is based on material created as part of Avi Mograbi’s film Between Fences, which was shown at the Forum in 2016. Enbar and Mograbi already took part at the 2012 edition of Forum Expanded with a live installation.

Izadora (listening to versions of herself) by Philip Scheffner, Merle Kröger and Izadora Nistor describes a moment that belongs to 14-year-old Izadora and her alone. Scheffner and Kröger already worked with Izadora and her family in their films Revision (Forum 2012) und And-Ek Ghes… (Forum 2016).

„The Stars Down to Earth“ is the title of this year’s Forum Expanded programme and is taken from the text of the same name by Theodor W. Adorno in which he grapples with the role of the irrational in mass culture. The works assembled around this theme confront an era that’s gone off the rails and engage with it by taking a keen look at the concrete and the present as well as the past.

In this way, the Bawabet Yafa (Jaffa Gate) multimedia installation conceived by Khaldun Bshara examines the history of the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, which was completely redesigned in line with the wishes of the new colonial rulers after the British conquest of the city. One part of the installation is the video ON THAT DAY by Mohanad Yaqubi which was produced by the RIWAQ Centre for Architectural Conservation and takes a closer look at the gate via historical photos.

Mohanad Yaqubi’s Off Frame AKA Revolution until Victory also forms part of the film programme. For Off Frame, he rummaged through archives across the entire globe to try and find films by Palestine Film Unit (PFU), a filmmaking collective whose militant practice accompanied the Palestinian Revolution and brought it into international view. Only a small number of the numerous films created between 1968 and 1982 still exist today, which makes rediscovering and interrogating them in relation to their current relevance all the more vital.

Yaqubi also presents his research as part of this year’s “Think Film” conference series. “Think Film No. 5: Archival Constellations” takes place in compact fashion over one day at the silent green Kulturquartier in Wedding. Eight archive presentations, three archive visits and a performance are planned.
What role does the location of an archive play, whether as a shelter, repository, production facility or sometimes even as a danger zone? Archives are movable entities; they can make new connections which bring them to life. The film archive of the INCA (Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual) in Guinea-Bissau thus also holds films from the former Soviet Union. Works from the Kiev School of Scientific Film ended up in a contemporary art context in similar fashion. The archive visits lead into Amos Gitai’s exhibition at SAVVY Contemporary as well as into the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art e.V. film archive, where concert footage (including that of Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria, Nick Cave) from 1980s West Berlin can be seen that stems from the !K7 archive. The day comes to a close with a special edition of the “Rising Stars, Falling Stars” series at which archivist and performer Ms. Vaginal Davis will be presenting a small 16mm excavation.

Films
Aapothkalin Trikalika (The Kali of Emergency) by Ashish Avikunthak (India / Germany, 79’)
Asbestos by Sasha Litvintseva, Graeme Arnfield (United Kingdom, 20’)
A Tall Tale by Maya Schweizer (Germany / Ireland, 16’)
The Brick House by Eliane Esther Bots (Netherlands, 16’)
Camera Threat by Bernd Lützeler (Germany, 30’)
Dark Adaption by Chris Gehman (Canada, 14’)
HASHTI Tehran by Daniel Kötter (Iran, 59’)
Heliopolis Heliopolis by Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy (Germany, 26’)
Im Gehäus (In His Room) by Eva C. Heldmann (Germany, 27’)
Jokinen by Laura Horelli (Finland, 45’)
Not Every Day is Spring by Haig Aivazian (Lebanon, 46’)
Off Frame AKA Revolution until Victory by Mohanad Yaqubi (Palestine / France / Qatar, 63’)
One Plus One Makes a Pharaoh’s Chocolate Cake by Marouan Omara, Islam Kamal (Egypt / Switzerland, 37’)
Popeye Sees 3D by Ken Jacobs (USA, 21’)
Ride Like Lightning, Crash Like Thunder by Fern Silva (USA, 9’)
Rudzienko by Sharon Lockhart (Poland / USA, 53’)
Seif Tagreeby (Experimental Summer) by Mahmoud Lotfy (Egypt, 69’)
Serce Miłości – Director‘s Cut (A Heart of Love – Director‘s Cut) by Łukasz Ronduda (Poland, 88’)
Set by Peter Miller (Germany, 10’)
The Shortest Day by Karø Goldt (Austria, 3’)
Sokun Al Sulhufat (Turtles are Always Home) by Rawane Nassif (Qatar / Lebanon, 12’)
SPIN by Ginan Seidl (Germany, 80’)
Tashlikh (Cast Off) by Yael Bartana (Israel / Netherlands, 12’)
Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon by Tomonari Nishikawa (Japan, 10’)
Studies on the Ecology of Drama by Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Finland, 26’)
Ulrike‘s Brain by Bruce LaBruce (Germany / Canada, 55’)
Ulysses in the Subway by Paul Kaiser, Marc Downie, Ken & Flo Jacobs (USA, 59’)
The Welfare of Thomás Ó Hallissy by Duncan Campbell (United Kingdom, Ireland, 31’)

Performance
Confessions of an Actress by Susanne Sachsse (Germany)

Group Exhibition at the Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg
Bawabet Yafa (Jaffa Gate) by RIWAQ (Conzept: Khaldun Bshara) (Palestine)’
Constructed Futures: Haret Hreik by Sandra Schäfer (Germany)
Hawamesh Aan Al-Hegra (Footnotes on Migration) by Take to the Sea (Egypt)
Isla Santa Maria 3D by Oliver Husain (Canada)
Izadora (listening to versions of herself) by Merle Kröger, Izadora Nistor, Philip Scheffner (Germany)
Pana Ha’Geshem (The Rain is Gone) by Noam Enbar (Israel / France)
Purple, Bodies in Translation – Part II of A Yellow Memory from the Yellow Age by Joe Namy (Lebanon)
Twelve by Jeamin Cha (Republic of Korea)
UHF42 E01+E02 by Mike Crane (USA / Palestine)
Untitled Fragments by James Benning (USA)
When Things Occur by Oraib Toukan (Palestine / United Kingdom)
Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams by Karrabing Film Collective (Australia)
And:
Towards Memory von Katrin Winkler (Germany)

Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada
Lago by Joshua Bonnetta (Canada / USA)

SAVVY Contemporary
The Law of the Pursuer” by Amos Gitai (Israel)

Think Film No. 5: Archival Constellations
Material to Investigate the Present, the Future Past – An Encounter with the Archive by the Harun Farocki Institut
Lab Space – Film Lab as Physical Space and Its Influence on Creative Process by Lisabona Rahman (Indonesia)
Reclaiming History, Unveiling Memory Part II by Didi Cheeka (Nigeria)

Archive visits to:
SAVVY Contemporary: The Law of the Pursuer by Amos Gitai; Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art: Living Archive – 10.000 Films & Subkultur Berlin80, a !K7 video archive.
The Solid Image by Filipa César (Germany / Portugal) and Sana Na N’Hada (Guinea Bissau)
For an Imperfect Archive by Reem Shilleh and Mohanad Yaqubi (Palestine)
Performing Moments of an Archive by Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk (Egypt / Germany)
Kinotron: The Kyiv School of Scientific Film by Oleksiy Radynski (Ukraine)
Reclaiming History, Unveiling Memory Part II by Didi Cheeka (Nigeria)
Saltwater Dreams: Archives of the Present by Karrabing Film Collective (Australia)
Vaginal Davis Presents: Rising Stars, Falling Stars