Video Activism


How can political videos from civil society effectively assert themselves on the Social Web against the superiority of advertising, entertainment and propaganda? This is the aim of a joint research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and conducted by the FU Berlin, the University of Bonn and Film University Babelsberg.

The Video Activism project is made possible by the collaboration between Prof. Dr Jens Eder (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf), Prof. Dr Britta Hartmann (University of Bonn) and Dr Chris Tedjasukmana (Freie Universität Berlin). It is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Website: videoactivism.net

The Peng! Collective


Peng! is an explosive concoction of activism, hacking and art battling the barbarism of our time.

It uses weapons of mass disruption to deliver radical messages.

Peng! is the antagonist of corporate PR agencies. It exposes dirty businesses that hide beneath glossy advertisement. It challenges corporate identities, political propaganda and mainstream mindsets with subversive direct action and civil disobedience. It explores creative ways of bold protest and encourage civil society and established NGOs to extend their toolset of conventional campaigning.

Website: pen.gg

Leftvision


Leftvision.de produces reports, short documentaries, debate formats and trailers on various topics from the perspective and to support the social movements. Its commitment is based on the conviction that the growing right-wing public must also be opposed to a strong critical counterpart on the web, through whom socially critical, anti-racist and anti-neoliberal convictions in connection with social movements can become effective.

Leftvision’s focus is on the existence, traditions and consequences of interlocking structures of rule, systematic relationships and social justice. However, it does not want to stand still when presenting and describing problems, but rather always show the developments and possibilities of resistance and protest in solidarity.

It is not about repeating social or journalistic general places in the usual market-like formats of the established mass media. Rather, Leftvision decides free of market constraints according to content criteria, what it produces and without throwing basic journalistic principles overboard. Leftvision strives for audio-visual quality that corresponds to modern viewing habits and that it describes as semi-professional. It gives the opportunity to reach a wide audience without giving up the right to a critical visual language.

Website: leftvision.de

Moviemiento


From traveling cinema to educational workshops and seminars, Moviemiento is a cultural non-profit organisation that brings people together in an open and accessible environment.

With a passion for travel and connecting with others, Moviemiento organises international projects in cooperation with local organisations. They work towards building bridges between people and cultures and promoting meaningful dialogue on socially relevant issues. Film is most likely the medium of choice to explore new and exciting ways to promote discussion and exchange.

Moviemiento’s projects take them all around Germany, to different countries, and even to other continents, and will last somewhere between a few weeks and a few months.

Moviemiento is non-profit. It is run by a group of impassioned volunteers hailing from various countries. They reap the fruits of our labour of love through the people we meet, the knowledge we exchange, and the happiness we experience by sharing something fantastic with others.

From filmmakers and videographers to designers, educators and project managers, Moviemiento brings the best of all fields together to organise actions that are creative, beautiful, and valuable for everyone involved.

Through dozens of regional and international initiatives, they have built an intercultural network based on friendship – and continue to grow our community with each project: from kids to adults, individuals to professionals, trainers and teachers, participants to spontaneous passers-by.

Website: moviemiento.org

Moviemento

Moviemento, the oldest cinema in Germany, is acutely endangered by property sales. We want to remove the rooms of the cinema from speculation, acquire them ourselves and thus ensure the long-term survival of this unique place. You can help us with that. Support us with an amount that is worth it to you. Be Moviemento Savior!

Website: moviemento.de

The Lichtblick Cinema

The Lichtblick cinema is an independent program cinema in Prenzlauer Berg. In addition to current art house films, our program offers many classics and regular retrospectives and work shows. We also give broad scope to documentaries, short films and politically committed productions. The weekend afternoons are dedicated to children’s cinema. Website: lichtblick-kino.org

The Arsenal

Communicating international film culture in a lively manner is both the aim and mission of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. Working at the point where practice and theory come together, the institute comprises a space for thinking outside the box in (film) cultural terms, a cinema whose attention is focused on independent and experimental film and a communication platform for promoting dynamic exchange between film, academia and art linked to a whole network of different organisations.

Website: arsenal-berlin.de

AK-Kraak

Since 1990, an approximately one-hour video cassette magazine in family-tv format has emerged from the flood of information and brings good news of unbelievable counter-currents, of wild, hidden whirlwinds in the prevailing illusion of monotony.

AK Kraak is not a television magazine, but a deep-sea magazine: we take a closer look at where others only use clichés. We are part of the global social awakening towards media self-determination. We play with the absurdities of power very closely and at the same time distant, denounce injustices and have fun doing it.

Website: akkraak.noblogs.org

LaborBerlin

LaborBerlin is a nonprofit, independent film collective, open to every individual interested in artist-run initiatives and especially in analogue film practice, which embraces a more experimental and DIY, craft approach to film production. The Lab is a meeting point of exchange and engagement of ideas and experiences around filmic creation.

Website: laborberlin-film.org

Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI)

In 1976, the filmmaker and writer Harun Farocki (1944–2014) envisioned an institution that ‘we can also organize’ as ‘an assembly of working people, not from an abstract understanding but from the contact points of their work’. The Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI), founded in September 2015 as a non-profit organisation, seeks to realise Farocki’s proposal in the shape of a platform for researching his visual and discursive practice and supporting new projects that engage with the past, present and the future of image cultures.

The HaFI initiates its own projects as an institute together with its network as well as in cooperation with institutional and individual partners. Their starting point can be themes or concepts from Harun Farocki, but also issues relating to documentary practices, changes in seeing and visibility, the work of images, and the work with images in general. Embedded in medium and long-term research processes, the projects are articulated in events and screenings, in publications, exhibitions, and educational offers.

Website: harun-farocki-institut.org

Slowboat Films

Slowboat Films is one of the last remaining bastions of truly independent film – dedicated to authentic & personal cinema made outside of the stronghold of the television and studio system.

Over the past 20 years Slowboat Films has gathered a dedicated international cult following for their uncompromising aesthetic and portrayal of underground art & music, radical politics and maverick minds.

Website: slowboatfilms.com

Labournet.tv

Every day, around the globe, people are struggling against exploitation and discrimination. labournet.tv shows their working conditions, collective action and self-organisation in the struggle. To date, the website has over 600 films and videos that shed light on the conflict between labour and capital – and how it is related to different forms of oppression (based on “race”, gender, social status etc.)  The ever-growing selection of films aims to facilitate our understanding of past struggles and bring them to live so as to support current conflicts. All of which should serve as an example and as inspiration for our own political engagement. And as a message in a bottle for the struggles of tomorrow.

Website: en.labournet.tv

Pirate Cinema Berlin

Pirate Cinema Berlin

Above all, the “War on Piracy” is a war against revolution: against the French Revolution that has generalized individual rights and against the Digital Revolution that has generalized the individual exchange of data. What cinema wants to generalize is the cancellation of these rights and the cancellation of these exchanges. That’s why we’re all criminals: not only those who circumvent the copy protection of a DVD or bring a camera to a cinema — in the U.S. today, both will face prison terms that dwarf the ones for theft and even exceed the ones for manslaughter — but everyone who insists on the basic banality that whatever is digitized has already been, and can always be, copied, and that whatever can be seen has already been, and can always be, reproduced.

Website: piratecinema.org

Kino Climates

Kino Climates is a European network of independent cinemas to support the freedom of programming and diversity in film culture. Our aim is to generate new ways to work while maintaining our heritage.

Website: kino-climates.org