December 2016

 

Arab Film Series - Beyond Spring

Thursday 08.12.2016 8:00 PM | Saal

Admission: 5 €

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

Co-Operation Flyer

"Constantino" by Otavio Cury

Documentary film, Brasil/Syria/Iran 2012, 80 min., Arabic/Portuguese/English with English subtitles

Discussion with Otavio Cury after the film.

 

Damascus, September 11, 2001. During a family trip to the land of his ancestors, Otavio Cury finds an unknown book that contains the entire literary work of his great-grandfather. Translating this book into Portuguese was the first step on a personal journey into the history of Daud Constantino Al-Khoury, poet and pioneer of Syrian theatre. The journey that ends with more questions than answers.


Otavio Cury was born in São Paulo in 1971. He has a degree in agronomics from São Paulo University (1994). His documentaries include Cosmópolis (2005), Constantino (2012) and History of Abraim (2015). He lives between São Paulo and Berlin.

 

Extract from the fim "Constantino"


Interview with Otavio Cury:

  


 

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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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