Angelika Ramlow

Angelika Ramlow studied theatre and film studies and literature at Free University of Berlin. She works at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art since 2001. Since 2004, she is a project manager of Arsenal Distribution with a focus on experimental film, video art and installations. She is part of the Forum Expanded team and has coordonated curatorial programmes and lectures at Film Festivals and cultural Institutions worldwide. She lives in Berlin and has two kids.

Angelika Ramlow participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Angelika Ramlow’s submission:

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Waterfall	Corinne Cantrill, Arthur Cantrill	Australia	1984	16’
Like a lucid dream, the movements of the water meld into a metaphorical space of constant transformation, which transcends the real and makes palpable the unbridled force of nature. It is one of the Cantrills’ most famous films and offers a unique viewing experience thanks to its brilliant interlacing of form, subject and apparatus.
The Doctor’s Dream	Ken Jacobs	USA	1978	23’
The Doctor’s Dream uses ruptures and rearranges the film images from an old television film, bringing to the surface the latent sexual connotations inherent in the story. Broken up in this way, the story of an elderly doctor who is curing a sick young girl appears in a totally new light. In this work Ken Jacobs returns the forbidden and the rejected to visibility. The appropriation and artistic processing of existing materials becomes a seismograph of the Zeitgeist depicted in the film.
Loose Corner	Anita Thatcher	USA	1986	10’
With Loose Corner we enter the space of optical illusions, in which our visual habits are turned upside down, so to speak, with the help of optical tricks, and thus approach the manifold forms of expression of the cinematic apparatus.
All My Life	Bruce Baillie	USA	1966	3’
One shot, early summer in Mendocino. Song, All My Life, by Ella Fitzgerald with Tedd Wilson and his orchestra. Melancholy in its beauty.
Rabbit’s Moon	Kenneth Anger	USA	1971	16’
poetic hommage to the silent area of cinema full of magic
My Name is Oona	Gunvor Nelson	USA	1966	10’
The experience of a child where both bliss and fear reigns in an expressive rhythmical and visual structure. Wild and free.
Saute ma ville Blow Up My Town	Chantal Akerman	Belgium	1968	13’
Just a wild film, dealing with loneliness, rage and trauma.
In the Street	Helen Levitt	USA	1948	21’
I admire Helen Lewitt as a brilliant photograper. The images in this film are breath taking. Filmed in East Harlem just after the end of World War II, In the Street is a dynamic, tender, and often humorous portrait of life in New York City.
Nuit et brouillard Night and Fog	Alain Resnais	France	1955	32’
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz. A disturbing but very important film.
Hapax Legomena III: Critical Mass	Hollis Frampton	USA	1971	26’
“As a work of art I think (Critical Mass) is quite universal and deals with all quarrels (those between men and women, or men and men, or women and women, or children, or war). It is war!... It is one of the most delicate and clear statements of inter-human relationships and the difficulties of them that I have ever seen. It is very funny, and rather obviously so. It is a magic film in that you can enjoy it, with greater appreciation, each time you look at it. Most aesthetic experiences are not enjoyable on the surface. You have to look at them a number of times before you are able to fully enjoy them, but this one stands up at once, and again and again, and is amazingly clear.” – Stan Brakhage. This statement is perfect, nothing to add.