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Criticism as Agenda!

Criticism as Agenda!

For one week, screenings and debates invite you all to reflect on such topics as film, criticism and cinema as a cultural space. Which standards define the present production, selection and perception of films? Where are films exhibited, by whom and under which circumstances? Who will write about them and how? The Berlin Critics’ Week challenges you to take a close look and to rediscover perspectives in the cinematic space.

In order to raise uncomfortable questions for ourselves, our colleagues, filmmakers and the industry, we published the Pamphlet for Activist Film Criticism during the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in May last year. More than 80 international colleagues expressed their solidarity and underlined the relevance of the issues addressed in the paper. One of the articulated demands was the installation of a Critics’ Week during Berlin International Film Festival, as an open space for debate, a place to defend a culture of passionate dissent and forms of discourse beyond the usual talk sessions.

From February 5 to 12, 2015 we will live up to this demand and show ten remarkable examples of international cinema. The films will raise questions that we will joyfully and polemically explore with a group of international guests.

Located between the main centres of Berlinale we will be a hub and a forum for dialogues, a place to foster friendship and solidarity beyond professional and dogmatic borders. But our debates will not be limited to the cinema. The online presence of the Berlin Critics’ Week seeks to create a stage and to serve as an amplifier for activist voices that seek to resist the pragmatic tendencies within our cultural industry. We will map the dynamics of our events and others. We will illustrate criticism beyond the concept of service. And we ask you to regard the first edition of the Critics’ Week as a spark and inspiration, as resistance and appeal, as an initiative that reaches out beyond Berlinale.

Get involved!

Within this weblog we invite you to participate and discuss. This is a space to continue debates and keep ideas alive that will never be fully explored within our events. By default, they are not intended to finalize viewpoints, but open up perspectives. Collected thoughts rooted here will be carried on by Facebook and Twitter.

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