FORCES OF CIRCUMSTANCE
Film Series selected by Renée Green

We are all faced with conditions we do not choose. Although we may all acknowledge this observation as a truism the way it resonates for each of us varies depending on our circumstances and perceptions of these conditions. This thought is a connecting thread between all of the films in this series. The articulation of this thought--the inescapable forces of circumstance--and the different trajectories taken in each film to develop these differences in a variety of registers with compelling force gives these films their strength and beauty. The questions which continue to arise within the frame of this theme and beyond it are: What can you do? and What do you do? And beyond individual agency the question of a larger social sphere in which choices are made by each individual and how the available possibilities are taken up, as well as how these in turn do or do not further shape the forces of circumstance is also an issue.
In each of the films selected these questions can be thought in relation to the different times and places which are invoked. The choices, no matter how available or limited, of the various protagonists within these fictional narratives and documentary films can be pondered alike The chain of situations which arise beyond their choices is what we can reflect upon and wonder about. These films allow us to witness situations which may encompass our understanding and which may also demand an attempt to go beyond what we can believe and which may allow a self-inquiry about how to be and act in this complex and ever-changing world. (Renée Green)

Kino in der Brücke
Kölnischer Kunstverein
Hahnenstraße 6
D - 50667 Köln

Telefon + 49 - 221 - 86 97 64 7
Telefax + 49 - 221 - 86 97 64 8
info@projektmigration.de

Admission Euro 5,- (Members KKV free)

Berlin-Jerusalem
Regie: Amos Gitai
F/Israel 1989, 89' OmU
A remarkable drama tracing the lives of two visionary women: German expressionist poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Russian revolutionary Manya Shohat. Moving along parallel lines between Lasker-Schüler's decadent Berlin of the 1920s and Shohat's pioneering collective society in Palestine, we follow the friendship between these two women (not based on historic fact) and the personal and political disillusionments they later experience. Both women share a sense of identity based on Jerusalem and the Holy Land, though Else's quest is individual and spiritual while Manya's is political.
29. Oct. 2002, 9 Pm

Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Regie: Christine Choy & Renée Tajima
USA 1988, 82' OF
This Academy-Award nominated film is a powerful statement about racism in working-class America. It relates the stark facts of Vincent Chin's brutal murder. A 27-year-old Chinese-American, Chin was celebrating his last days of bachelorhood in a Detroit bar. An argument broke out between him and Ron Ebens, a Chrysler Motors foreman. Ebens shouted ethnic insults, the fight moved outside, and before onlookers, Ebens bludgeoned Chin to death with a baseball bat. The film addresses issues such as the failure of the U.S. judicial system to value every citizen's rights equally, the collapse of the automobile industry under pressure from Japanese imports, and the souring of the American dream for the blue collar worker.
30. Oct. 2002, 9 Pm

I'm British, But...
Regie: Gurinder Chadha
GB 1989, 32' OF
Chadha wryly and humorously examines notions of national identity through interviews with the grown-up children of South Asian British living in less expected parts of the UK. Celebrating a unique cultural synthesis to a Bhangra soundtrack, "I'm British, But..." represents one of the first second-generation South Asian films from the UK.

Dreaming Rivers
Regie: Martine Attile
GB 1988, 32' OF
A poetic, visually intoxicating and original film of transformation produced by Sankofa film collective. Miss T, a Caribbean-born woman, has died. Her three children gathered around her deathbed suggest new and differing futures for life, for hope, for England.
31. Oct. 2002, 9 Pm

La Noire de...
Regie: Ousmane Sembene
F/Sen 1965, 80' OmU
Considered to be Black Africa’s first feature film, "La Noire de..." tells the story of a young African girl's dreams of moving to Paris, amidst the backdrop of decolonisation in Africa, her eventual move, and the life she encountered working as a maid in France. Driven to despair by her loneliness and mistreatment by her employers, she decides to end her life.
1. Nov. 2002, 9 Pm

The Grapes of Wrath
Regie: John Ford
USA 1940, 128' OF
A family of several generations of hardscrabble farmers in Oklahoma get displaced, along with other families, by a big agri-business company and begin a difficult exodus to the West to seek a new life under harsh conditions in the economically depressed U.S.
2. Nov. 2002, 9 Pm

Pressure
Regie: Horace Ové
GB 1975, 125' OF
Widely held as the first Black British feature, "Pressure" has lost none of its timeliness. Unemployment, police harassment of black youths, thieving, smoking ganja, demos, black consciousness, political activity – it’s all here in the story of Tony. The English-born son of Trinidadian parents living in Notting Hill, Tony finds himself alienated from his white friends and white values, and follows the lead of his militant older brother into involvement with Black Power.
3. Nov. 2002, 9 Pm

Projekt Migration, a project initiated by the

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