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Eleven minutes of television erupts on sixteen screens, dealing with the Berliner Festwochen. The cinema newsreels and television reports from 1951 to 1987 reveal, with their sharp juxtaposition and vibrant musicality, the observant, judgmental, illustrative, abrupt, oversimplifying and lurid tone of public reporting. What emerges is a process of emancipation for the Berliner Festwochen, an institution caught between foreign policy and cultural policy mandates, the American allies, a national spirit of optimism, and an infinite amount of art and culture that demanded to be shown and discussed again after 1945. Emancipation is achieved primarily through the programme itself turning towards political, activist, experimental and avant-garde forms of art that include cultural and artistic spectrums beyond the Central European horizon.

 

"It is a television ornament." (Stephanie Rosenthal)

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With: Claudio Abbado, Baby Laurence Tab Dance​, Boreslaw Barlog, Eubie Blake, Leo Blech, Bread & Puppet Theatre, Benjamin Britten, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton And His Inner Circle, Leander Haußmann, Kabuki Company Ennosuke Ichikawa III from Tokyo, Kathakali Dance Theatre, Michael Meschke, Thomas Ostermeier, Erwin Piscator, Puppetry Ensemble of Shaanxi from Xi'an, Sarah Vaughan and her Trio, Youth Orchestra of the European Community and Peter Zadek

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Screenings:

28 May - 17 Octobre 2021, as part of the exhibition "Everything Is Just for a While", Museum Gropius Bau Berlin

 

5. September 2021 - 3. Januar 2022, as part of the internet film series "Breaking News, Talking Heads and Arts" on berlinerfestspiele.de

 

10. - 17. October 2021 at Festival "The Sun Machine is Coming Down", ICC Berlin.

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Cooperation partners

RBB, 3sat, Deutschlandfunk

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Partners

Akademie der Künste, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Medienkunst e.V., Associazione Grupporiani, Berlin Art Link, Boosey & Hawkes, Bundesarchiv, Transit Film, EAI Electronic Arts Intermix, Edition Peters Group C.F. Peters Ltd & Co, Felix Bloch Erben, Filmgalerie 451, Japan Actors Association, Kobalt Productions GmbH, MONA productions, Sammlung Video-Forum des Neuen Berliner Kunstverein e.V. (n.b.k.), Phenomen Berlin Filmproduktion GmbH, Progress Film GmbH, Suhrkamp Theater Verlag, Shochiku Co. Ltd. Tokyo, Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Südwestrundfunk (SWR), Telewizja Polska S.A., ZDF / Arte, ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

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With special thanks to

Botschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bujumbura (Burundi), Botschaft der Volksrepublik China in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bunraku Kyokai, Osaka (Japan), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Galerie Hauser & Wirth (Zürich), Goethe-Institut Tokyo und Kyoto (Japan), Goethe-Institut Kigali (Rwanda), Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin, Japan Foundation in Berlin, The Living Theatre, La MaMa Archive, Landesarchiv Berlin, National Ballet of China, Neue Nationalgalerie (SMB), Nohgaku-Kyokai (Association of Noh Actors), Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Wolf Vostell Estate as well as René Block, Maksym Demydenko, Guido Diekmann, Ulrich Eckhardt, Helfrid Foron, Petra und Erhard Grosskopf, Felix Gruntz, Werner Heegewaldt, Nathalie Huck, Mona Intemann, Peter Konopatsch, Torsten Maß, Udo Lindenberg, Ida Müller und Vegard Vinge, Heinz-Dieter Reese, Frieder Schlaich, Julia Schmejkal and Martina Seidel.