One day we started wondering. Year for year, more and more remarkable videos were arriving from France. We had gradually become familiar with the names APA, Arcanal, Canai+, Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Centre Georges Pompidou, CICV, Ex Nihilo, Grand Canal, Heure Exquise!, INA, La Sept, (to name but a few!), but nevertheless a certain diffuseness remained. Video in France - three words that we suffixed with an increasing number of question marks. At international festivals we were eager to find examples of "vidéo création" and representatives from France. We studied all the credit titles, and at some point it struck us that in France there was an incredibly wide range of sponsorship for video. People mentioned "Les Cent Lieux", an association of video cinemas. We kept on hearing new things, and suddenly the realization dawned: the current video landscape in France is possibly the most exciting in the world. We set out to investigate this thesis. Our findings: the assumption can be verified and disproved in equal parts. In other (less academic) words: in terms of the quality of productions as well as the infrastructure, French video is a mass of contradictions. These contradictions we accepted "avec plaisir" - because they confirmed one aspect of our theory: video enjoys an immense level of cultural acceptance in France. Whether the level of social acceptance is equally high - that will be a question for this symposium to deal with. We have invited ten speakers from France, all of them important figures in French video culture. In the framework of the "Akzente" series they will illustrate focal issues with videos and open the subsequent discussion. Each speaker is responsible for one 2-hour program section - while the others will daily form a panel to answer questions. The objective of the symposium is less to inform than to reflect and analyze - consequently, necessary basic information on the French video scene is given in this catalogue. The media scientist Erwin Reiss will act as moderator. The symposium will be conducted in French, with simultaneous translation into German and English.

Dates: February 16 to 20, between noon and 6 pm daily.
The appropriate framework will be provided by 14 screening blocks in the main program, Nightflight, and various special programs.