2018 Forum Expanded:
To Revolutionise the Senses

One of the most revolutionary works in the 2018 Berlinale, in my opinion, is Extended Sea by Nesrine Khodr which can be seen in your exhibition. With a running time of 705 minutes, it fundamentally contradicts every imperative of accumulation and stress in the context of a film festival and creates a completely different form of perception and sense of time. Can I actually have my senses revolutionised in the 2018 Forum Expanded?

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus: It’s great that you’re beginning with this work. We were already aware of it during last year’s selection period but it was too late for 2017. When this year’s programme slowly started to take shape, we had the feeling that something was missing. Then we remembered Extended Sea because the work creates a changed space-time relationship, one that allows you to focus on your own senses, put aside expectations and enter the exhibition – and perhaps even the entire festival – with freshly opened eyes. That’s why we’ve placed the work at the start of the exhibition in the Akademie der Künste.

In 2018 you are making very specific references to the director and film theorist Maya Deren. Is this work to be viewed in this context?

SSS: It touches on the core of her theory of cinema. For Deren, cinema is only meaningful when it evokes new ways of perception which are never the last word. The next seeing experience will change everything again. The concept of “experience” is very important to her: she sees it as the basis of what is political in cinema. In our programmes we’re trying to create a space of possibility in which cinema and the forms of our perception can be constantly expanded and changed.

How does this relate to your focus on documentary works?

SSS: Overcoming space and time is a topic which permeates the programme. In Aala kad al shawk - Le Voyage immobile (As Far As Yearning), Mohamed Soueid and Ghassan Salhab live in different cities and express their longing for their friendship and the city of Beirut via the exchange of lyrics from popular songs. In Ard al mahshar (Land of Doom), Milad Amin can now only make contact with his friend Ghith via Skype and phone calls from Beirut. Ghith is an activist and photographer and we see the final days of the siege of Aleppo through his camera. Amin relies upon his friend’s pictures and descriptions. This relaying by media creates a different level of perception.

Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 by Zach Blas transports Ayn Rand and her collective from 1955 to a dystopian future version of Silicon Valley. From the perspective of the here and now, the film simultaneously offers a trip into the past and the future – which leads to deliberate confusion. Both are fiction – the past just as much as the future.

I also associate Deren’s reference to Marx with the image of the dying state. Will there be a time when cinema is no longer needed?

SSS: That very much depends on the definition of cinema. Cinema has the task of critically engaging with the visual media. If cinema no longer existed, we would probably be faced with an uncontrolled flood of images. And even though there are numerous possibilities outside of cinema – for example, in art and theory – to conduct research into and criticism of images, cinema has found a form for this that is much more firmly established in society. For this reason, I cannot imagine a future without cinema. At the same time cinema is, for me, a very open format. How precisely it can take on a new form is another question. But cinema is needed.

SSS: When the viewer just sees big colour fields, gaps develop on the screen that open up not just one but an infinite number of spaces of possibility. Thus, in a very contemporary way, Honda is meeting Deren’s demand for a cinema that changes perception by leading the viewer to its fundamentals. In my opinion, it is a very political gesture.

Have you watched this work in its entirety?

SSS: No – we couldn’t have blocked the cinema for 36 hours. And it isn’t essential to see the film in its entirety either – although we initially toyed with the idea of screening it at full length overnight and organising catering for the spectators. 30 ago there would have been a huge audience for this. But today, viewers prefer at some stage to go and watch another film or go to bed or to a party. Therefore, we decided to screen it in sections for a few hours each evening during the festival in the small auditorium at Kino Arsenal.

Works like 6144 x 1024 are difficult to distribute. Is there nevertheless a “market” for such works?

SSS: In Forum we offer to take the work of every invited artist and filmmaker into our collection and/or our distribution company. However, this is not about the market: it’s about creating the largest possible visibility above and beyond the duration of the festival. We see it as our duty, at least to a certain extent, to take on responsibility for the works that we invite and to offer them a home. Our viewers include a large specialist, professional audience. Not just film distributors but also gallery owners, curators and other disseminators. Their experiences during the festival often have long-lasting effects. Some of the works in our programme are still finding their way into other projects and exhibitions years later. I wouldn’t call this “market” but rather interface.