LE CINÉMA DU MÉTISSAGE * CINEMA BETWEEN CULTURES * DAS KINO ZWISCHEN DEN KULTUREN
A film series on migration culture, films selected by Georg Seeßlen

The development of humankind stems from the pains, risks, chances, and joys of wandering. And as varied as the reasons may be for leaving one’s native country in search of happiness or merely to survive in a foreign place, so too are the conditions of traveling to that foreign place and, even more so, the conditions upon arriving and living there with others. Stories must be told of such journeys—again and again—for new pictures to emerge.
More than a hundred years ago, a new medium was invented that could tell stories in pictures. A medium suited like none other for distributing stories of wandering, tales of living between cultures or in several at the same time, stories of arrival and departure. Cinema itself is a medium on a journey, a “nomadic” medium that has sent technology, themes, and talents on their way between cultures. Hollywood was the place where the great world dream factory of migration developed. Every European country became too small for the camera. Film festivals have become crossroads of partly virtual, partly real migrations. And for many immigrants, cinema is often the first “home” once they arrive in a foreign country, just as for others cinema evokes a desire to travel to a foreign place.
Since the 1960s, exile and expatriation adventures and migration movements have had a different quality to them. Their narration is defined by the economy and media. One’s own personal fate must be rescued from double exploitation. And once again, it’s film that offers a chance (though no guarantee) to narrate stories that run counter to economic whims, bureaucratic cold-heartedness, and horribly senseless violence.
Our film series is meant not only to show the breadth and diversity of migration stories in pictures. All four acts in the drama of migration are depicted via different examples: the reason for leaving, the adventures and danger of the trip, the shocks and disappointments upon arrival, the start of a new life in a foreign place, which gradually becomes less “foreign” but never actually becomes “home” entirely. Stories of triumphs and failures are told, of grotesqueness and tragedies, of conflicts between cultures, traditions, languages, the sexes, and generations. There is a cinema of accusations and even a cinema of despair, a cinema of rebellion and irony, of playing with clichés. But among it all is a cinema of the future in the film narrations of migration.

What does the migration movement amount to? The hope of a happy return or of the complete disappearance of the “foreign” by trying to become a “native” rarely becomes reality. But perhaps there is a much greater hope: the evolution of a new, open culture between the cultures. A culture that opens up new opportunities both for immigrants as well as for the people of the established local culture. A cinema beyond the global dream machines can be a wonderful model for showing how enrichment can arise out of conflict. After all, just as the people living between two or more cultures can see things more clearly, can tell stories more richly, can design their worlds more freely, so too is cinema between the cultures more flexible and independent. The best European Heimatfilme (sentimental films with a regional background) stem from the perspective of métissage, or mixed ethnicity.

A movement toward emancipation is taking place in cinema. It is moving, among other things, from images about migration culture toward images from migration culture. While this cinema speaks of the misfortune that must be overcome in each story of migration, it also speaks of hopes and utopias. They exist neither in separation nor in dissolution, but in openness. In cinema, it is quite clearly a matter of one’s perspective. (Georg Seeßlen)

Program:

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)

Zire puste shahr / Under the Skin of the City (Rakshan Bani-Etemad)
Iran, 2001, 92 min.
A film about a mother who works hard to make ends meet for her family. Her son is obsessed by the idea of working and getting rich in Japan–a dream that many young people in Iran share.

IN THE GHETTO 1

Kurz und schmerzlos / Short Sharp Shock (Fatih Akin)
Germany, 1998, 100 min.
Three friends–a Turk, a Serb, and a Greek–from the Altona district in Hamburg struggle through a life of occasional trickery and doing time in prison: But they also contemplate life, love, and the chance to have a career. This film is an authentic, realistic depiction that makes the lives of young people in this kind of big city environment understandable.

COMEDY & FARCE NIGHT

Drachenfutter / Dragon Chow (Jan Schütte)
Germany, 1987, 79 min.
The film tells the story of two foreigners who can’t get a break in Germany. A quiet, poetic black-and-white film (copied onto color) that unobtrusively, sometimes humorously, champions the refugees’ cause.

Geboren in Absurdistan /Born in Absurdistan (Houchang Allahyari)
Austria, 2000, 110 min.
Two babies just born to a bourgeois Austrian family and a Turkish immigrant family get mixed up in a hospital. But the Turkish family has already been deported back to Turkey. Stefan and Marion follow the family there, and desperately try to convince the others to take a paternity test.

Erkan & Stefan gegen die Mächte der Finsternis / Bunnyguards vs. The Forces of Evil (Axel Sand)
Germany, 2002, 80 min.

CHILDREN’S PROGRAM

Granica - Die Grenze / Granica – The Border (Robert Thalheim)
Germany, 2001, 12 min.
A day in the German-Polish border town in which a bridge connects both worlds. A little boy goes on his first walk along the border.
Isabel auf der Treppe / Isabel on the Step (Hannelore Unterberg)
GDR, 1984, 70 min.
A young Chilean woman living in political exile experiences what it is like to live in a country where she’s unwelcome.

IN THE GHETTO 2

Babylon 2 – Das große Mitte-Land / Babylon 2 – The Big Mitte-Land (Samir)
Switzerland, 1993, 80 min.
Urban societies of the Northern Hemisphere are characterized by a newly formed landscape: the endless suburb. Everyone is an immigrant in these parts–whether he or she comes from the same country, from a different country, or even from a different continent. Suburb inhabitants are able to reproduce their native culture and language only with the help of the media. Yet the young second generation has begun to define its own identity by using this media. This essay-like, cinematic contemplation on the three subjects of the suburbs, emigration/immigration, and the mass media examines this process of defining identity that is occurring in the Swiss Mittelland.

Geschwister / Kardesler /Siblings (Thomas Arslan)
Germany, 1996, 82 min.
The various paths life takes in métissage culture are juxtaposed within one family: returning to one’s home country, adapting to the conditions in a new country, and crime in the ghetto.

KRIEG, FLUCHT UND ASYL / WAR, REFUGE, ASYLUM

Le clandestin / Der blinde Passagier / O Clandestino (José Laplaine)
Zaire, 1996, 15 min., French, with German subtitles

L’america (Gianni Amelio)
Italy/France, 1994, 115 min.
A 28-year-old Italian man and his partner want to open a shoe factory in Albania–at least, that’s what they say. In reality, however, they simply want to pocket subsidies. This film is an impressive, yet sobering résumé that devises an oppressive vision about the loss of identity and dignity which each individual as well as an entire people face.

COMIC MIGRATIONS: A FANTASTIC EVENING OF VIDEO

Alien nation (Graham Baker)
USA 1988, 91 min

Brother from another planet (John Sayles)
USA 1984, 108 min

Men in black (Barry Sonnenfeld)
USA 1997, 98 min

YOUNG PEOPLE’S PROGRAM

Ghetto Kids (Christian Wagner)
Germany, 2003, 90 min.
A film about fourth-generation children of migrants living in the Neuperlach part of Munich–a delicate dance between maintaining hope and succumbing to crime.

MÉTISSAGE COMEDIES AND TRAGICOMEDIES 1

Getürkt / Weed (Fatih Akin)
Germany, 1997, 12 min.
A short film about a young Turkish German on vacation visiting his mother in Turkey, who gets mixed up with gangsters. A “late declaration of love of his native country” by the director and a satire about clichés.

Les années lycée - sa vie à elle / Ihr eigenes Leben / Her Own Life (Romain Goupil)
France, 1995, 84 min.
A tragicomedy about a 17-year-old daughter of Algerian immigrants living in Paris, who appears one day at school wearing a headscarf. Her classmates and teachers begin to distrust and shun her.

WAR, REFUGE, ASYLUM 2

Waalo fendo - Lá où la terre gèle (Mohammed Soudani)
Switzerland, 1997, 63 min.
The dream of living in wealthy Europe prompts the Senegalese man Yaro to go to Italy. He and his brother want to earn money for their family. But Yaro’s brother is murdered in Milan shortly after they arrive, sending Yaro on a search to find the murderer and figure out his motive. The film received the 1998 Swiss Film Prize.

Escape to paradise (Nino Jacusso)
Switzerland, 2002, 90 min.
A documentary feature in which the protagonists act out their real lives: Semuz’s Kurdish family–his wife and their three children–are staying in a center for asylum seekers in Switzerland as they wait for notification from the authorities. Influenced by a friend of the family, Semuz tries to better his situation by using falsified documents and painstakingly memorizing a new identity. Yet his endeavor not only causes his family to lose the few possessions they still have, but also puts their uncertain future in Switzerland at risk.

LONG NIGHT: WOMEN ON THE BALL

Mädchen am Ball / Girls on the Ball (Aysun Bademsoy)
Germany, 1995, 45 min.
A documentary about a soccer team composed of girls of Turkish descent living in Germany–caught between their families’ reservations and the problem of double discrimination.
Nach dem Spiel / After the Game (Aysun Bademsoy)
Germany, 1997, 60 min.

Bend it like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha)
Great Britain, 2002, 112 min.

LONG NIGHT: MIGRANT WOMEN

40 m² Deutschland / 40 m² of Germany (Tevfik Baser)
Germany, 1986, 80 min.
In keeping with tradition, the migrant worker Dursun fetches his wife Turna from his native village by “buying” her. He then locks her up in his apartment in Germany to protect her from the chaotic, dangerous world. Even after his death, Dursun still remains a burden to Turna.

Marie-Line (Mehdi Charef)
France, 2000, 100 min.
Marie-Line (Muriel Robin) is the much-feared boss of a cleaning retinue composed mainly of illegal immigrants. The ambitious, work-hungry Marie-Line will go to any length to win the prize of “Best Cleaning Retinue of the Year” again. This intimate supermarket play by Mehdi Charef offers a convincing, down-to-earth example of the solidarity among the “sans papiers” in France.

STRANGERS AMONG STRANGERS

Down and out (Espen Vidar)
Norway, 1995, 10 min.

Lola und Bilidikid / Lola and Billy the Kid (Kutlug Ataman)
Germany, 1998, 93 min.
The story of the 16-year-old Turkish boy Murat who lives in Berlin and is confronted within his own family with the “stigma” of his homosexuality. Murat’s brother Osman thinks that love between men is the worst thing imaginable. Murat finds his own identity in transsexual and transvestite bars, and falls in love with the transvestite Lola. But Lola has a secret in which Osman plays a surprising role.

GLOBAL VILLAGE NIGHT

Amsterdam Global Village (Johan van der Keuken)
Netherlands, 1996, 245 min.
A four-hour profile of Johan van der Keuken’s native city of Amsterdam, that has served as a hideaway for centuries for so many, while also maintaining the charm of a village. Like a powerful musical composition with a range of themes, motifs, and variations, the film evokes the unique nature of this city and its inhabitants–the Dutch, immigrants, refugees, new arrivals–all of whom link Amsterdam to the world.

LIVING BETWEEN CULTURES 1

Das Hochzeitsbankett / The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee)
U.S.A./Taiwan, 1993, 106 min.
A young homosexual Taiwanese man living in New York can only get out of a traditional wedding arranged by his parents by pretending to already be married.

MÉTISSAGE COMEDIES AND TRAGICOMEDIES 2

Salut cousin! / Hello, Cousin! (Merzak Allouache)
France, 1996, 103 min.
A comedy about a young Algerian man who visits his cousin–someone who possesses an amazing ability for getting himself into dangerous and embarrassing situations. Alilo discovers that life in Paris is neither as glamorous nor as abysmal as people have told him.

Roundtable Discussion with Filmmakers
Thomas Arslan, Sülbiye Günar, Ayse Polat, and Hilmi Sözer cite various clips from movies in discussing films around “migration.” Moderation: Georg Seeßlen

Karamuk (Sülbiye Günar)
Germany, 2002, 94. min (The director will be present during the screening.)
Johanna, a 17-year-old, dreams of studying fashion design in Paris. As she searches for a way to pay for her studies, Johanna discovers something which startles her at first: it is not her mother’s long-term boyfriend who is her father, but a Turkish man who owns an elegant restaurant in Cologne. Before she knows it, Johanna’s in the middle of the Turkish family clique–and the first big adventure of her life. (Prizes: Women´s Film Festival Torino (2003); Créteil, France (2003); Houston World Film Festival, U.S.A. (2003))

ON THE ROAD

Auslandstournee / Foreign Tour (Ayse Polat)
Germany, 2000, 85 min.
After Senay’s father’s death, neighbors give charge of the 11-year-old girl to the only friend of the family, the gay nightclub singer Zeki. Zeki is at first unwilling, then agrees to take Senay to Hamburg to find her mother, whom Zeki has never met.

Suzie Washington (Florian Flicker)
Austria, 1998, 87 min.
Nana is a so-called “economic refugee” from Georgia. “My country is committing suicide” she tells a border patrol. That is why she wants to go visit her uncle in America. But since her papers have been falsified, she is stopped on her journey at the Vienna airport. This marks the beginning of an odyssey through Austria. Flicker tells a story without pointing fingers. The film’s scenes vacillate between being grotesquely comic and threatening–with elements from both a “Heimatfilm” and a road movie.

LIVING BETWEEN CULTURES 2

Italian American (Martin Scorsese)
U.S.A. 1974, 45 min.
Denk ich an Deutschland - Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren / I’m Thinking About Germany – We’ve Forgotten to Return (Fatih Akin)
Germany, 2000, 59 min.
In his first documentary, Fatih Akin goes on a search for his family roots. His film offers a very personal look at his Turkish family and takes viewers along on a trip from the Altona district of Hamburg to Filyos, a small fishing village on the Black Sea, which his father left in 1965 to start a new life in Germany. Fatih Akin calls his family portrait an “immigration film.” It is one of the few films to capture the creative spirit of second-generation immigrants in Germany. Akin takes a multi-faceted approach in addressing the broad span between the cultures–and likewise reflects that range as a writer, director, and actor of both his own and others’ films.

LONG NIGHT OF AMERICAN DREAMS

America, America (Elia Kazan)
U.S.A., 1963, 174 min.
The story of a long hopeful journey is based on the life of the director’s uncle.
Someone Else’s America / Paradise, Brooklyn (Goran Paskaljevic)
France, Germany, United Kingdom, Greece, Yugoslavia, 1995, 95 min.
Paradise, Brooklyn is a real fairy tale about two immigrants living in a run-down area of Brooklyn, who yearn for their native country. Bayo is an illegal alien from Montenegro, who has managed to find a hide-out for himself and his rooster with the Spaniard Alonso. Alonso lives with his blind mother in the “Paradise Bar” and dreams of love. The pretty Syrian daughter from next door–Afisi–has caught Alonso’s eye, but there’s the problem of the rich produce-seller trying to capture Afisi’s attention. And on top of everything else, Alonso’s mother wants to go back to Spain before she dies. The chaos reaches its peak when Bayo’s mother shows up with his kids.

FILMART TAKES POSITION
Alien / Nation - Die Filmrolle / The Film Reel (Concept: Gustav Deutsch) Film stills: sixpack wien
FILMART TAKES POSITION is a forum for cinematic art statements that take a critical stance toward society. From the 172 works submitted, an international jury chose 15 films and videos from seven different countries to be compiled on the film reel called “Alien/Nation.”
Mariage Blanc
Austria/Morocco, 1996, Gustav Deutsch, color, 5 min.
Biba-non-biba
Belgium, 1994, Hänzel & Gretzel, color, 4 min. 30 sec.
Dar-el-Beida
Austria, 1996, Tim Sharp, s/w, 2 min. 40 sec.
Grüezi / Hello
Switzerland, 1995, Jonas Raeber, color, 2 min. 20 sec.
Extract
Great Britain, 1996, Kristin Mojsiewicz, color, 4 min. 15 sec.
Ph/r/ases
U.S.A., 1995, Sikay Tang, color, 4 min. 40 sec.
Heimkehr 1941/1996 / Homewards 1941/1996
Austria, 1996, Institut für Evidenzwissenschaft:, Caroline Weihs, Michael Domes, black&white, 5 min.
SnapsPotS
Austria, 1996, Kurt Kren, color, silent, 4 min. 45 sec.
Zehn kleine Negerlein / Ten Little Negroes
Germany, 1992, Jochen Ehmann, color, 1 min. 30 sec.
Paradigm Lost, Part I
Great Britain, 1995, Shaheen Merali, color, 5 min.
Non portare i cani in chiesa
Italy, 1994, Marco Lanza, color, 1 min.
Genocides
Belgium, 1994, Hänzel & Gretzel, color, 2 min. 30 sec.
Ich suche nichts, ich bin hier / I’m Not Searching for Anything, I’m Here
Germany, 1994, Holger Mader, color, 4 min.
Alarm
Austria, 1996, Dietmar Brehm, color, silent, 1 min. 12 sec.
Die letzten Bilder der Nacht / The Last Pictures of the Night
Austria, 1994/96, Paul Divjak, color, silent, 4 min.

Projekt Migration, a project initiated by the

back