Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie)

silent green presents

A Festival celebrating 60 years of Das kleine Fernsehspiel
 

"We are making a cinema that no longer exists and a television that does not yet exist" (J.L. Godard). This is how the head of the editorial department Eckart Stein described the vision of the ZDF editorial department Das kleine Fernsehspiel, newly founded in 1962. Conceived as a television workshop and development laboratory, a platform was created for the international new generation of auteur cinema. Elementary questions of our present about diversity, equality and decolonisation have been dealt with in this broadcasting slot since its beginnings, as have cinematographic experiments and film language positions that pointed far into the future. The freedom in genre and length, the curiosity about cinematic narratives beyond commercial cinema makes the archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel a treasure trove for film studies research: Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander Kluge, Helke Sanders and Ulrike Ottinger, Sohrab Shahid Saless and Raoul Peck, Derek Jarman and John Akomfrah, the filmmakers of the Berlin School and German-Turkish cinema to currently important directors such as Maryam Zaree, Mo Asumang and Burhan Qurbani are just a few of the early works that can be found here.

The exhibition and the event programme Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie) at silent green takes this TV archive as the starting point for a historical retrospective, a description of the state and a question about the future of young auteur film. In the process, television and film culture heritage are thought together for the first time.

A Film Series (June–December, Kino Arsenal) and a Festival (November 16–26, silent green) with symposium, exhibition, performance, cinema on Demand and research stations will create a walk-in archive of independent world cinema. As part of an editorial pop-up, members of the editorial team of Das kleine Fernsehspiel will be available for talks during the festival period, introduce the work of the editorial team and present various aspects and focal points of the programme.

A symposium with international guests will address questions such as: What protective spaces are there for marginalised, non-commercial and experimental positions and for talking about films together? Where does film culture take place today and tomorrow? How can the history of Das kleine Fernsehspiel be told from a transnational perspective? In addition, we will use the example of Das kleine Fernsehspiel to discuss the pros and cons of opening up public television archives and reflect on future curatorial exploitation models. In parallel, the exhibition will show 60 selected films from 60 years of Das kleine Fernsehspiel in the form of a walk-in film and television archive. They will depict the multiplicity and simultaneity of different voices and formats and give the audience the opportunity to make spontaneous, individual or even accidental connections of meaning. Documents in the form of production files, worksheets and reception protocols will also make visible artistic networks and thematic choices made at the time.
 

Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie) is a project of silent green Film Feld Forschung gGmbH in cooperation with Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Film Studies/Media Dramaturgy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. With the kind support of the ZDF editorial department Das kleine Fernsehspiel. Supported by Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin. Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.