As part of the lecture series “Genre and Affect,” film scholar Thomas Elsaesser will give the first Cinepoetics Lecture. The lecture is going to take place on May 15 at 5pm (Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin). Following Elsaesser’s presentation, there will be a screening of the film Le fils by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Based on this film, Thomas Elsaesser describes a form of European cinema that provides ‘thought experiments’ regarding the political values shared by Europeans. Such films often feature protagonists who suddenly find themselves marginalized or ostracized, but who are willing to inhabit their abject position and push it to the point where living division differently becomes a possibility.