transmediale.07 is the 20th edition of the festival, which began as VideoFilmFest in 1988. The first programme booklet opens with the remark: "On the afternoon of 16 December 1987, we took the decision to found the VideoFilmFest ‘88. ” Only 54 days later, the first festival opened which was initially dedicated to ‘video culture' (mainly understood in opposition to film) and soon entered into a critical dialogue with televison, before dealing with ‘multimedia’ and ‘media art' in the 1990s and developing into the current ‘festival for art and digital culture' that has been running under the name transmediale since 1998.
The festival was first a project by the independent MedienOperative (later renamed Mediopolis), which closely cooperated with the internationalen forum of the Berlinale Film Festival in presenting its programmes of experimental and documentary videos. Until 1992, these events took place in the spaces of MedienOperative and at the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin, then moving to Podewil from 1993 to 2001, which has also housed the office of transmediale since 1997, the year when the organisation of the festival was taken over by Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH (renamed Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in 2006). From 2002 to 2005 transmediale took place at the House of World Cultures, and since 2006 it has been held at Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg.
In the first years, the festival was rather erratically supported by the Berlin regional government, which began to secure its existence only from the mid-90s onwards through the Culture Administration, the Lottery Fund, and the Capital City Culture Fund. Since 2005, transmediale has been receiving substantial funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
The festival was initially directed jointly by Hartmut Horst (until 1994) and Micky Kwella (until 2000). From 2001 till 2007, Andreas Broeckmann has been the artistic director of transmediale.

In the framework of the transmediate*20 (‘tm times twenty’) programme, transmediale. 07 offers several historical perspectives and events that reflect the development of the festival and of art in its dialogue with media.

TM*20 - THE REGISTER
An extensive publication that lists all participants from the last 20 years of the festival in minute form complete with a detailed index. An overwhelming compilation that documents the diversity and breadth of the programmes.

PROJECT LIBRARY
Besides displaying most of the submissions to this year's award competition, the Project Library gives access to historical collections of video and media art - more than 40 years of video art from Germany, Brazil, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Austria, Slovenia, the Netherlands, a.o.

CONFERENCE ‘MANY YEARS OF VIDEO ART’
On the occasion of the recent edition ‘40 Years of Video Art in Germany', curators and historians discuss the potential and limitations of writing the history of video and media art.

INFERMENTAL
The video magazine Infermental was published in 11 editions throughout the 1980s. Its curated compilations offered a unique and singular perspective onto contemporary video productions. During transmediale.07, the original curators present excerpts from their many hours long video programmes, while all editions can be viewed in the Project Library.

MEDIA ART IN THE GDR?
In a film programme curated by Claus Loser, we show the experimental cine-films of GDR artists, which can be understood as a historical parallel to the development of video art in the West. A panel discussion explores the question whether there was something like ‘media art' in the GDR.