FILM SERIES
how does the world breathe now? | Wednesdays
NEW PUBLICATION
THE INCANTATION OF THE DISQUIETING MUSE. On Divinity, Supra-Realities or the Exorcisement of Witchery
how does the world breathe now?
Session N°32: "And your eyes, oh Lord" with Mohammad Salemy
July 26, 2017 | 7 PM
SAVVY Contemporary | Plantagenstraße 31 | 13347 Berlin
Free entrance - donations welcome
The House is Black by Forough Farrokhzad (1962, 26 minutes, Farsi with English subtitles) The Cow by Dariush Mehrjui (1969, 100 minutes, Farsi with English subtitles) 
For our 32nd screening Mohammad Salemy brings us two masterpieces of Iranian cinema: Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black and Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow.
Khaneh Siah Ast (The House is Black) is a documentary directed by Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967) a critical and still widely read feminist poet and filmmaker from Iran. The short film depicts the lives and bodies of people tragically deformed by leprosy and is considered to be a precursor to the Iranian New Wave.
Gaav (The Cow) is a film by Dariush Mehrjui (b. 1939) about Hassan, a middle-aged villager, and his relationship with his cow. It is widely regarded as the first film of the Iranian New Wave. What begins as a quiet meditation on the man’s pride in his cow, his companion and his most valuable possession, unfolds into a broad depiction of Hassan’s changing position within the social structure of the village.
Even though these films are integral parts of the history of Iranian cinema, they are difficult to find and therefore not widely screened in Germany. Farrokhzad’s and Mehrjui’s films are two different stories about the political aesthetics of transformation in which humanity stands at the intersection of hideousness, beauty, madness, and bestiality. These films both emphasize how recognizing the often invisible inhumanity within the human is the first step in dealing with the question of otherness: as it pertains to different ethnicities, the mentally ill, and the sick. We present The House is Black and The Cow to you within the context of the series followed by a discussion afterwards with Salemy who will draw on his research on both films regarding their individual themes and their philosophical and political implications.
Mohammad Salemy is an independent New York-based artist, critic, and curator who holds an MA in critical curatorial studies from the University of British Columbia. He has shown his works in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works 7 (Beirut) and Witte de With (Rotterdam). His writings have been published in e-flux, Flash Art, Third Rail, and Brooklyn Rail, and he has curated exhibitions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Access Gallery, and Satellite Gallery in Vancouver as well as Transit Display in Prague. In 2014, he organized the Incredible Machines conference. Salemy’s curatorial experiment “For Machine Use Only” was included in the 11th edition of Gwangju Biennale (2016). He currently co-organizes the education programs at The New Centre for Research & Practice.
NEW PUBLICATION
THE INCANTATION OF THE DISQUIETING MUSE. On Divinity, Supra-Realities or the Exorcisement of Witchery
We have the pleasure of presenting you our new SAVVY Contemporary publication: THE INCANTATION OF THE DISQUIETING MUSE. On Divinity, Supra-Realities or the Exorcisement of Witchery edited by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Federica Bueti. The book is designed by Elsa Westreicher and published by THE GREEN BOX.
How do 'witchery' phenomena and practices manifest within cultural, economical, political, religious and scientific spaces in Africa and beyond? This publication is a compendium to the eponymous exhibition project and public programme curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Elena Agudio at SAVVY Contemporary, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut South Africa in the framework of the project African Futures. Through an exhibition and a series of invocations, the project considered 'witchery' as an epistemological space and a medium of continuities between the African continent and its Diaspora. The publication includes essays by Erna Brodber, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Vladimir Lucien, Percy Mabandu, and Greg Tate a.o, and visual contributions by artists Georges Adéagbo, Haris Epaminonda, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Emeka Ogboh, Priscilla Rezende and Minnette Vari a.o.
OUT NOW:
312 pages, 34 illustrations, English / German
ISBN 978-3-941644-95-3
EUR 19,00
This publication has been generously supported by Goethe-Institut South Africa via TURN Fund der Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
