Residing in the Borderlands
Monthly Film Series: Take I 27.04.2019 19:00
With Ali Moraly
ENTRY Free – donations welcome
We are delighted to welcome you to our new monthly film series Residing in the Borderlands. For the first take we will be joined by Ali Moraly, who will invite us to become audio-viewers, exploring new relationships between music and image through a selection of films on the topic of fantasy and representation. Screening followed by a discussion with Ali who selected the following films:
__How to Make a Refugee (1999). Phil Collins. 12 min.
With a musical intervention by Ali Moraly.
__Close-Up (1990). Abbas Kiarostami. 1hr 40mins. Farsi with English subtitles.
Upon our invitation to screen a film, Ali Moraly immediately thought of Phil Collins’ How to Make a Refugee, which he had encountered a couple of days prior in a lecture by Thomas Keenan. Ali was struck by how clearly the film documents the narrative practices through which refugeeness is constructed, and although he is generally sick of questions about his experience he saw in this film the opportunity to intervene in a narrative that is often thrust upon him. As such, we will be screening the short film with a new composition by Ali, which he has created for the occasion.
In Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up, fiction and reality intertwine as the director alternates between following and re-enacting the story of Hossain Sabzian, who was charged with fraud for impersonating the famous filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Choosing to cast the actual parties involved, including filming the trial, Kiarostami raises questions about cinema’s capacity to shift how one is viewed in society. With this series, one of our goals is to explore how we move through the city and how our own fantasies and projections about our futures can shift our positions within it. As such, we are excited to begin the series with this classic from Kiarostami!
On the occasion of the launch of the series, we are excited to serve a meal by Patrick Schabus, including his inimitable Transylvanian-Saxon pork gulasch.
ALI MORALY is a violinist, composer, music teacher and writer based in Berlin. Born in Damascus, he studied there at the Higher Institute of Music, and also holds a Masters degree from the University of Music in Karlsruhe. He has been commissioned to compose pieces for documenta14 in Kassel, the Oldenburg State Theater, and BACHfest 2018 in Tübingen. He has performed throughout the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
Our monthly film series RESIDING IN THE BORDERLANDS intends to create a new cartography of Berlin through diasporic perspectives. As part of our diasporic place-making, we will explore different film-worlds, considering both the visual and the auditory. Through the cinematic experience, we aspire to reach another way of being present, thinking of film as a form of movement that can also propel us into previously unthought of futures.
To this end, we will invite twelve speakers, each from a different diasporic community, and with occupations within and beyond the cultural sector, to choose a film that represents their experience moving through the city. As we unearth the diasporic polyphony in which we live, spaces that may be just a facade at the edge of our peripheral vision, become concrete places embodied by the experiences of the individuals who inhabit it.
CURATORS Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein, Eirini Fountedaki
COORDINATION Jörg-Peter Schulze
COMMUNICATION Anna Jäger
GRAPHIC DESIGN Ola Zielińska
The film series is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education.