Berlinale 2025: 20. Forum Expanded – 19 going on 20 | Short Film Programme
The Berlinale Forum Expanded Turns 20!
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Berlinale section Forum Expanded, 19 going on 20 brings together short films from the last 19 festival editions, providing an insight into the wide variety of cinematic forms that make up the Forum Expanded.
With films by Maite Abella, Zuza Banasińska, Cana Bilir-Meier, Filipa César, Ayşe Erkmen, Kevin Jerome Everson, Harun Farocki, Mohammadreza Farzad, Paul Geday, Ken Jacobs, Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Vika Kirchenbauer, Marie Losier, Tomonari Nishikawa, Isabelle Prim, Shelly Silver, Clarissa Thieme, Anton Vidokle, and Eduardo Williams & Mariano Blatt.
The short film programme is presented as a continuous loop throughout the day.
Total length: 283'
SAVVY Contemporary
16.2. 12–10pm
silent green Kulturquartier
17.2. 12–10pm
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
18.2. 12–10pm
The Anniversary Programme
On Construction in Griffith’s Film
Harun Farocki, 9’, Germany 2006
A sequence by Griffith from 1916’s Intolerance. There are numerous forms of montage: naturally, the wide shot, the varying camera angles, shot-reverse shot, parallel montage, leaps in time across many decades. But one sequence is especially notable.
Coffee
Ayşe Erkmen, 25’, Turkey 2007
Shot with a classical talking-head framing, Coffee constructs a cinematic space – the spatiality of the cinema – between a woman and the man reading her coffee grounds. The coffee grounds become the projection screen of a film.
Creamy Krimi
Isabelle Prim, 11’, France, Germany 2007
This touristy enquiry into Berlin only focuses on clues and signs provided by suspect, almost guilty passers-by. The final “collage” becomes an arborescence of dubious Freudian slips.
16-18-4
Tomonari Nishikawa, 2’, Japan 2008
This film was shot with a still camera with 16 lenses, which takes a series of 16 pictures within 1.5 seconds. It shows scenes of the Tokyo Racecourse during the biggest race of the year, Japanese Derby.
O Quam Tristis (Oh, How Sad)
Maite Abella, 9’, Netherlands 2009
Mother and daughter have always been fighting. Inspired by the old American Western films, this physical last battle could be the way to solve their problems.
Gom O Gour (Into Thin Air)
Mohammadreza Farzad, 26’, Iran 2010
A short documentary film about the “Bloody Friday” massacre of innocent Iranian people on September 8 of 1979, in the same month that the director was born.
Bye, Bye
Paul Geday, 5’, Egypt, Netherlands 2012
In revolutionary Cairo, the filmmaker tries to let go of objects accumulated over generations. He films inside the huge flat that used to belong to his parents, with an interior that dates back to the years preceding yet another revolution.
Cuba
Filipa César, 11’, France 2012
Based on research in the Guinea-Bissau film archive, this cinematic essay proposes Amílcar Cabral’s path from agronomist to his role as the leader of the Guinean liberation movement and promoter of the birth of Guinean militant filmmaking supported by Cuba.
Bim, Bam, Boom, Las Luchas Morenas
Marie Losier, 12’, USA, Denmark, Mexico 2014
Three women/three sisters/three professional luchadoras, part of the Dynasty Moreno: Rossy, Esther, and Cynthia are competitive wrestlers on the ring. But they also bring lucha libre to life, wrestling with knives, pig heads, flowers, and feathers!
This Is Cosmos
Anton Vidokle, 30’, USA 2014
A cinematic investigation of the ideas of Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, who believed that death was a mistake. Fedorov was one of the Cosmo-Immortalists, who wanted to create “cosmos” on earth.
The Lamps
Shelly Silver, 4’, USA 2015
The Lamps details Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s trip to the Naples Archeological Museum in the early 1900s where she breaks into “Il Gabinetto Segretto,” a secret room filled with erotic objects from Pompeii.
Popeye Sees 3D
Ken Jacobs, 21’, USA 2016
Imagine Popeye’s predicament, with objects growing and shrinking on all sides. Bizarre as some Eternalisms are, they do open even for a single eye. No spectacles, no special projection.
Today Is 11th June 1993
Clarissa Thieme, 15’, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegowina 2018
The inhabitants trapped in Sarajevo during the Yugoslavian War made an amateur video calling for a time machine to get them out of the city. Simultaneous translation is used to bring this call out of the past and into the present.
Parsi
Eduardo Williams, Mariano Blatt, 23’, Argentinia, Switzerland 2018
Parallel to the list of “what seems to be but isn’t” from the poem “No es” by Mariano Blatt, Parsi observes spaces and people in a perpetual movement to create another poem that is caressed by, crashes into, and spins next to “No es.”
Untitled Sequence of Gaps
Vika Kirchenbauer, 13’, Germany 2020
Composed of vignettes in different techniques and materialities, Untitled Sequence of Gaps uses the form of an essay film to approach trauma-related memory loss via reflections on light outside the visible spectrum – on what is felt but never seen.
May June July
Kevin Jerome Everson, 9’, USA 2021
The months of May, June, and July are represented with peonies, fireflies, and the year 2020. A rollerblader (Jahleel Gardner) traverses Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C.
Moune Ô
Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 17’, Französisch-Guayana, Frankreich, Belgien 2022
“I close my eyes. The crowd makes me smile, breaks my body, and that’s the end.” An examination of footage from a film premiere leads to the investigation of colonial continuities and family histories.
Zwischenwelt
Cana Bilir-Meier, 18’, Germany 2023
Stories of migrants and their descendants in Germany: a monument for a Pakistani poet in Munich, the payslips of a Turkish Gastarbeiter in Kiel, three sisters turning a decolonial gaze on Bavarian history.
Grandmamauntsistercat
Zuza Banasińska, 23’, Netherlands, Poland 2024
Created out of archival materials from communist Poland, the film tells the story of a multispecies matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems.
For more information about the individual films, the program and the showtimes please visit the website of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.
The anniversary program is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
75. Berlinale: Forum Expanded 2025 – 19 going on 20 | Short Film Programme
Monday, February 17
12 pm to 10 pm
Kuppelhalle
Admission free and possible at any time