Following the Berlin movie festival, Berlinale, there is one other important cinema event in Berlin, the Artist Films at Kino International that was held during Berlin Art Week (September 13th–18th).

The event screens films by 15 film artists that are brought from participating galleries. The curator is Marc Glöde, a veteran curator who has worked at Art Basel and the Finnish Museum of Photography.

Looking at the list of films and artists this year, I was happy to see many exhibits were from galleries that are normally salons and places of fun. I was full of expectations just seeing in the credits Esther Schipper, a gallery where I first learned about the electric sound artist, Jan Jelinek.


Personally, I was interested in Ugo Rondinone, an artist who came from Esther Schipper. Another filmmaker I was interested in was Sarah Morris. Her work is housed at a gallery I frequently visit, Capitain Petzel in Berlin.

I’m sure that this Artist Films at Kino International held a special position in this year’s Berlin Art Week. In the 1980s, for example, self-styled new wave directors such as Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch, who are now long-standing veterans, took up the challenge of creating abstract films rather than entertainment films or independent road movies, but they weren’t widely presented to general audiences. Instead, their standing was such that they were quietly screened in art museums at a rate of about once every several years.

If those films had been introduced back then with the current sense of appreciation, the term “art films” would’ve been used. That’s what I thought after coming to this year’s Berlin Art Week.