Meters and meters of film sound, radio chatter about stars, movies, and film shoots, a passion for Schlager from German films, outtakes and unused footage, and fragmented interviews with famous and lesser known names of film history: This is what we hear on the hundreds of tapes recorded and collected by Hanswolfgang Bergs now stored at the Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Bergs understood the sound film not only as a visual but primarily as an acoustic medium. From 1946 to 1969, he produced countless radio programs for German public broadcaster Südwestfunk about films and filmmakers, making radio a now nearly forgotten site of popular film culture in West Germany. To do so, Bergs and his colleagues traveled with tape recorders to festivals, premieres, and film sets. The focus of Bergs’ work gradually became a collection of re-recorded film soundtracks, which he systematically organized into a film sound archive. The question today is: What can we do with this archive?

Archival Assembly #3: The Politics of Listening to the Moving Image

The third edition of the biennial festival turns its focus to the importance of sound and language within the archival practices of international film history, organized by Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst. The festival venues this year are silent green, Kino Arsenal, SINEMA TRANSTOPIA and migas where a sonic daytime program is presented every day between 12:00 and 18:00. Come any time to enter the two-hour loops.