November 2016

 

Arab Film Series - Beyond Spring

Thursday 10.11.2016 8:00 PM | Saal

Admission: 5 €

Organizer: Werkstatt der Kulturen/ Mayadin al Tahrir e.V. / EUME
Curation: Viola Shafik

Co-Operation Flyer

"About Baghdad" by  Sinan Antoon (co-director)

Documentary film, USA 2004, 90 min., Arabic with English subtitles

Discussion with Sinan Antoon after the screening.

 

 

About Baghdad is the first film made about Iraq after the fall of the Ba'ath regime in July 2003. It is also perhaps the first effort to privilege the voices of the Iraqi people, from all walks of life as well as social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. About Baghdad presents Iraqis who describe the pain, complexity and suffering of living under decades of tyranny, oppression, wars, sanctions and now occupation. Silenced for so long by a regime that sought to replace the people with the image of just one man, and re-silenced by the bombs and occupation forces, the Iraqi people long to speak out and to claim their future.

Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi-American poet, novelist, scholar, and an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. He was featured in the 2003 documentary film About Baghdad, which he also co-directed.

Film extract

  

  Interview with Sinan Antoon:

 


 

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Beyond Spring - Arab Film Series

In 2010, the Tunisian protest movement triggered a wave of upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa that became known as “the Arab Spring”. However, there is also a history to tell beyond “Spring”.

Since 2014, the WERKSTATT DER KULTUREN has been highlighting films from several Arab countries as part of the Arab Film Series, with this specific selection of films curated by Viola Shafik. It aims at exploring some major social and political issues in the region and further our understanding of various dynamics in regards to class, gender and politics in general, as well as explore topics concerning confessionalism, social justice and the question of Palestine.

The screenings will be accompanied by moderated panels with academic experts from the Berlin-based research program Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME) at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.


 

Viola Shafik, PhD, is a freelance filmmaker, film curator and film scholar. She authored among others Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, AUC-Press, Cairo, 1998 and Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class and Nation, AUC-Press, 2007. She lectured at the American University in Cairo and the Zürich University and is in the selection committee of the Rawi Screenwriters Lab and the Berlinale World Cinema Fund. She directed several documentaries, most notably Ali im Paradies/My Name is not Ali (2011) and Arij - Scent of Revolution (2014).
She currently teaches at the Humboldt University, Berlin and the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.

In cooperation with Mayadin al Tahrir e.V. and EUME (Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe).

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The facilities of the WERKSTATT DER KULTUREN are accessible to wheelchair users. Please call us in advance on +49 (0)30 60 97 70-0 to ensure proper access support.

 

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