arsenal institut für film und videokunst e.V.

Germany 2018, 21 min
by Laura Horelli

Seven people wait in an underground station below Karl-Marx-Allee in former East Berlin. Billboards line the walls, each combining a front page of “Namibia Today” with associative material. “Namibia Today” was a journal of the Namibian liberation movement, which was printed and distributed by the GDR during times of military confrontation with South Africa. SWAPO’s (South West Africa People’s Organisation) editorial board was forced to operate from exile in Angola, and without the ideologically

1968, 42 min
by Claudia von Alemann, Reinhold E. Thiel

Turn of the year 1967/68: the 4th International Experimental Film Festival is taking place at the Belgian seaside resort of Knokke. In addition to clips from the films, Claudia von Alemann and Reinold E. Thiel’s documentary above all shows the parallel events, the spontaneous performances, happenings and protest actions that took place there. They include the works of Harun Farocki, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Shirley Clarke, Holger Meins, Gustav Lamche, Armand Gatti and Mauricio Kagel, as well as

2023, 182 min
by Sibylle Kappes

Tibet plateau, Himalayas. Milking yaks in front of nomadic black tents, meditating during demolition in the mega-monastery Larung Gar, prefabricated building mania of the young cities. Sky-burial, Tsa-Tsa ritual, mountainscape. PA-JILL meanders through the reality of Tibetan culture torn between tradition and a centralized state. Interviews with the Dalai Lama and Rinpoches on site are commentary. The situation is burning.Tibet is a white spot on the visual map of the Western world, and there is

Polen, Germany, Iran 2022, 16 min
by Mohammadreza Farzad

A poetic essay meticulously constructed from clips of Iranian 8mm home videos from bygone days. As we watch birthdays and wedding parties, people dancing, laughing, swimming or just relaxing, a narrator, in a contemplative, sometimes heavy voice, enumerates series of dry facts. But what does it matter how many kisses one received, how many times one truly laughed or what time one went to bed or got up? Can adding up such numbers sum up a life?These listings of figures alternate with brief confes

Germany 2021, 80 min
by Juliane Henrich

The film Land Before Time takes the director's family history as a starting point to explore the concepts of home and historiography in the politically highly charged landscape of Silesia. The protagonist embarks on a trip to the Polish village of Krasiejów as the director's alter ego. We follow her through the summer days with surreal encounters where the borders of fiction and documentary are blurred. She meets people of German and Polish origin who had to leave their homes at the end of the w

Germany 2018, 27 min
by Gregor Kasper, Musquiqui Chihying

The video examines the campaign to rename streets with colonial connotations in the so-called African Quarter of Berlin-Wedding. It also explores Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed’s vision of a multidimensional politics of memory.

Germany 2018, 48 min
by Siska

The work is about the ruination of film heritage in Lebanon navigated through the country's cinematic heydays of the late 60s and early 70s - a period that witnessed a rise of Egyptian producers and directors moving to Lebanon to make films partly due to Nasser's nationalization of the Egyptian cinema.The film features : Alexandre Paulikevitch (dancer) and Fredrika Brillembourg (soprano singing in Lebanese Arabic). Filmed between Beirut, Tripoli, Baalbeck, Casablanca and Los Angeles...Eng. Fr. A

2017, 48 min
by Kerstin Schroedinger

“In this situation, I wanted to start from the materiality of my body, analyse the restrictions imposed on it, which have become part of my psychology. From there, I wanted the ability to act and re-appropriate my body, my knowledge and a different practice…”(quoted after Women’s Group Via Cherubini Milano, in: Sottosopra 1976)Juxtaposing images of the production sites of the pharmaceutical-chemical industry with speculations on the historical, social, and material conditions of Cyanotype photog

Germany 2016, 40 min
by Volker Sattel

The portrait of a house without supporting walls. A bold dome made of concrete, an open space–right in the middle of the bizarre rock formations of a rugged coast made of reddish granite. The house belonged to actress Monica Vitti and director Michelangelo Antonioni. The emptiness of the »cupola« and the deserted quality of the site are the starting point for speculating – at this place Antonioni wrote the script for ZABRISKIE POINT. Seemingly at random, figures wind up in the image and enter th

2016, 68 min
by Jumana Manna

Robert Lachmann was a German-Jewish ethnomusicologist. In the 1930s, his radio show "Oriental Music" explored the musical traditions of Palestine and included regular live performances by musicians from different ethnic and religious groups.Inspired by Lachmann’s musicological studies, Palestinian artist Jumana Manna travels through Israel and the Palestinian territories of today with recordings from the programme. What do these songs sound like now when performed by Moroccan, Kurdish, or Yemeni

Germany 2014, 40 min
by Volker Sattel, Stefanie Gaus

First triangles, then hexagons – the hexagon as the geometric DNA of an erratic architectural structure with an eerie lack of scale. Slowly, in the succession of hallways, apertures, views, and spaces, an enormous construction is disclosed. Already in its first images, Beyond Metabolism conveys a fascination for a utopia of architecture that imagines life in future societies in flexible, large structures, expandable at will. We find ourselves in the interior of the International Conference Cente

2023, 32 min
by Gusztáv Hámos, Katja Pratschke

IN LIMBO is about a young man who flees from Hungary to West Berlin during the Cold War. Kiesling's story begins with his conscription into the people's army for military service. Ever since he realised that the state – in which he lives – claims ownership of him, his relationship with reality, with real freedom, has changed dramatically. He decides to reset his identity.Kiesling's attempts at self-determination are told parallel to the history of Freedom Square in Budapest. Since the imperial b

Germany 2018, 17 min
by Alex Gerbaulet

Two newspaper articles, ten years apart, two different women, the same wording. In 2001 the “Göttinger Zeitung” wrote that Margit (69) had lived a secluded life as an inconspicuous woman. In 2011 the “Hamburger Abendblatt” stated that Irina (65) had lived in seclusion, a non-descript woman. Up to the moment of their appearance in these newspaper lines, both women were invisible, forcefully concealed by their roles as wives and homemakers. Only for a brief moment did they claim visibility. Throug

Germany, Egypt 2018, 83 min
by Daniel Kötter, Constanze Fischbeck

Desert View initiated by the theatre and filmmakers Constanze Fischbeck and Daniel Kötter explores residential formats in Madinaty, a new town in the desert, 30km outside of Cairo. The film is the result of a four week long „residency“ experiment, where both the filmmakers and the three-generation family Barakat from Cairo’s informal settlement Bashtil, became temporary residents of Madinaty. Equipped with their own cameras, professional ones and low-fi mobile phones, both „teams“ analyzed from

2015, 79 min
by Eva C. Heldmann

The film interviews five people who cannot pay their electricity bills. They live below the poverty line without light and heat, in or near large cities. Berlin based artist Laurence Grave acts a composite rôle, representing aspects of the other people. She sees, hears and touches in her forsaken apartment, and feels limited and excluded. At the same time she is extra-sensitive to the passage of light, day and night, through her windows. A long indoor twilight persists between the bright sunligh