Was anderes machen

The exhibition WAS ANDERES MACHEN, the home and the movie focused on the archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Late Night Programme from the TV channel ZDF) that produced over 1000 films and the archive of Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art and television with over 15000 films who were commemorated together for the first time on their 60 years old common story.

Both film programmes were born in 1963. When the German Television programme went on air, asked about his intention, editor in chief Eckart Stein quoted Godard: “We are making cinema that no longer exists and television that does not yet exist.”. The expansion of politically and formally innovative filmmaking, world cinema – especially films from the global South and East, feminist, queer, subjective and experimental forms of film reached television. Elementary questions of our time on diversity, equality and decolonisation were dealt with in this broadcasting slot.

This exhibition worked as a walk-in transnational archive at the Betonhalle of Silent Green for public use: a curated TV programme with over 60 films from six decades set in six cinema spaces were conceived as “living rooms” for people to stay and enjoy them, a research platform with open folders of all films exhibited invited to get your hands in the archive of each film, a “cinema on demand” was articulated by the interest of the own visitors and closing the space, a TV studio was set as a temporary space for academic exchange and social encounters, for performance, workshop discussions and dialogue with guests from all over the world.

The space was an invitation to discover one’s own path and to spin one’s own threads. At the interface of cinema and television, the utopia of a library of images emerged.