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Five years of exf f. – perhaps a minor anniversary, but one that is of great significance to us and, in times of budget cuts and changing priorities in the cultural scene, testifies to the foothold that the festival has achieved both in the Frankfurt film scene and, increasingly, at the European level. An anniversary as a celebration, then – a celebration of what cinema can be when freed from narrative constraints and academic definitions, and a celebration of all those who have accompanied the festival, from near and far. A tribute to the beauty of the world that simultaneously undertakes a critical revision of one's own perspective, the history of colonialism, and the state of the world — this could be one way to approach Peter Hutton and Mark LaPore, whose works we are presenting in a dialogical retrospective. Curated and presented by Arindam Sen and Daniel Swarthnas, who have become dear companions to us, this retrospective will be one of the rare opportunities (at least outside the US) to encounter Peter Hutton's concentrated black-and-white and color compositions of cities and the sea. Mark LaPore is a figure who has unfortunately been largely overlooked. In the tradition of diary films and travelogues, LaPore spent many years traveling the world, documenting people and places, and conducting profound, cinematic, highly concentrated personal investigations into the nature of cultural change, critical ethnography and reverie. As Tom Gunning writes:"[LaPore's films] should be seen by anyone who cares about the cinema and who cares about the way this image machine can display the world we have made and, especially, the aspects we prefer to ignore or forget. Their courage matches their beauty and their growing despair." Several strands emerge from the works of Hutton and LaPore, creating connections and ramifications with and between the various filmmakers featured in this edition. The tradition of the diary film as a subjective reflection on the state of the world (both in its broader political manifestations and in its intimate private moments) brings to mind Ute Aurand and Milena Gierke. Aurand, who was born in Frankfurt, has been making films for over four decades and has worked tirelessly to promote the cinematic achievements of women for just as long. Her works are imbued with a haptic immediacy and a devotion to the splendor of the moment, which is to be captured on celluloid. Milena Gierke, who belongs to the generation after Aurand, studied at the Städelschule under Peter Kubelka and joined the Filmsamstag in 2001, a collective founded by filmmakers - among them Aurand - and which until 2007 proposed a vital activity of programming “alternative” filmmaking, that continues to inspire us today. Gierke's works, which include observational studies and cinematic diaries, are a profound examination of the supposedly “amateur format” of Super 8 and are characterized by an intimate relationship between the filmmaker, her camera, and the world she films. In our two programs, we have decided to focus on films that Gierke created during various stays in New York, thus establishing a spiritual connection to Peter Hutton's New York Portraits. A connection that in turn underscores Gierke's uniqueness, as evidenced by her monumental New York Film Diary: an epic composed of seconds-long glimpses and encounters with the city and its inhabitants. It was also in New York that the young African American Edward Owens launched his career and created a unique body of work. Tragically, Owens had to give up filmmaking as quickly as he had discovered it, creating only four films. We are therefore all the more delighted to be able to show the newly restored 8mm films that Owens shot during his time in Chicago. Another focus of our program this year is dedicated to the relationship between ecology and cinema and forms of filmmaking that are committed to an “anti-anthropocentric” — or “anti-hierarchical” — stance, as expressed in the subtitle of Sílvia das Fadas' three-projector live performance Light, Blaze, Fulgor. Based on a black-and-white photograph showing the ruins of the “Commune of Light” founded in 1917 by António Gonçalves Correia, the project “das Fadas” imagines cinema as a space of utopia, in which the dreams of the future are channeled through the ruins of the past—towards a world in which, as Hölderlin put it, “chacun soit comme tous” (everyone is like everyone else). Like das Fadas, Rose Lowder is a filmmaker whose work combines an interest in exploring nature and the modalities and modulations of the cinema machine with an attention to ecology and the natural world around us. As one of the central figures of European experimental film, Lowder has also been actively involved in promoting and archiving this type of cinema. In her own practice, Lowder starts from the fundamental insight that the starting point of cinema is not the unfolding of the film reel, but the photogram itself. From this monadic treatment of the image, she has created films over nearly four decades, combining playfulness in her choice of motifs with relentless formal rigor and technical precision. The films by Hille Köhne and Uli Versum present real biotopes, as the curators of the series, Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann, write. Köhne worked extensively with colored foils to transform the filmed image into a “magical space” “in which people and objects, trees and plants, even lettering appear and begin to tell stories.” The fantastic and imaginative transforms into the comical and absurd in Uli Versum's films, in which humor and abyss are closely intertwined. Finally, we would like to thank all the filmmakers, archives, venues, and those with whom we collaborated to make this year's edition of exf f. possible: The entire Pupille team, Natascha Gikas and Andreas Beilharz from DFF, Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann, Miguel Armas, Arindam Sen, Daniel Swarthnas, Elena Duque, Teoman Yüzer, Kyle Westphal and Enrico Camporesi, as well as all the helping hands who support the festival. We would also like to thank Julia Rosenstock for designing the catalog, Luisa Mielke for the flyers and posters, and Simon Bugert for the website.

Here’s to five more years!

exf f. is a festival dedicated to experimental and avant-garde film in all its diversity, both historical and contemporary. for four days, we would like to create a space in which various cinematic works in their specific medialities and materialities are brought into focus as an independent art form. films of this kind have a difficult time in regular cinema operations. they often “fall between stools” in a film landscape that focuses on feature films and documentaries as well as in the art world and there are few opportunities to experience them as part of an expanded, lively cinema culture. our program will include various analog formats, from super 8 to 16mm and 35mm, as well as digital productions and digital copies of restored films.

a big thanks to our sponsors, the HessenFilm und Medien GmbH, the Kulturamt of the City of Frankfurt, the AStA of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Instituto Cervantes Frankfurt as well as our cooperation partner the Filmkollektiv Frankfurt e. V., without whose support this festival would not be possible.

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martin klein, larissa krampert, björn schmitt