The edition arsenal experimental has taken on the task of initiating new discussions and of putting experimental film back on its feet. And in three languages: in that of the film, that of the idea, and in the language of empathy.

Christine Noll B

This DVD-plus-book marks the initiation of a series dedicated to reexamining and restoring the original luster of German experimental and underground film. "The term 'avant-garde' is only outdone in its perfidy by the adjective 'experimental'", writes Heinz Emigholz. who in 1993 inaugurated the "Experimental Film Design" class at the Berlin University of the Arts. Christine Noll Brinckmann uses this citation in what still remains the only attempt to give an overview of the history of experimental film in Germany. Her text, "Experimental Film 1920-1990: Collective Movements and Solitary Thrusts", which appeared 1993 in the

History of German Film, is riddled with citations that in their variety circumscribe something that is deplorably absent from hegemonic film history. In 1989 film critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt characterized it as "the nidifugous bird -- the cinema alongside the cinema." Historically, experimental cinema has sometimes been a hiding place, sometimes an island of banishment. Today it seems to have become uncharted territory for the visual arts, just as experimental film has found its -- sometimes problematic -- place there.

The edition arsenal experimental has taken on the task of initiating new discussions and of putting experimental film back on its feet. And in three languages: in that of the film, that of the idea, and in the language of empathy.

Christine Noll Brinckmann has mastered all three. As works of a filmmaker, spectator, scholar, and author, her films and texts are highly appropriate as the inaugural publication of a series intended to rewrite history by keeping and making films visible.

DIE URSZENE / THE PRIMAL SCENE (1981) is a filmic commentary to the feminist critique of Hollywood, DRESS REHEARSAL AND KAROLA 2 (1981) an hommage to the underground star Kenneth Anger, and DER FATER / THE FATHER (1989) a homemovie investigation of German colonial history.

Contributions by Stan Brakhage, Robin Curtis, Vinzenz Hediger, Maria Morata, Heide Schlüpmann, Alexandra Schneider, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Katharina Sykora.

DVD with the films by Noll Brinckmann plus two texts by Christine Noll Brinckmann and the films discussed in the texts, STILL LIFE (Jenny Okun GB 1976) and CASTA DIVA (1st episode, Eric de Kuyper, NL 1982)

supported by Berliner Kulturverwaltung - Künstlerinnenprogramm

ISBN 978-3-927876-25-5