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  7. Die Herrin der Welt – Die Freundin des gelben Mannes

Die Herrin der Welt – Die Freundin des gelben Mannes

The Mistress of the World - The Girlfriend of the Yellow Man
Joe May, Germany 1919, 90 Min., 35mm
Followed by a talk with Dr. Kien Nghi Ha, Dr. Tobias Nagl and Joshua Kwesi Aikins

Original version with live music accompaniment from silent film pianist Jürgen Kurz

The screening will be introduced by Dr. Tobias Nagl. Introduction: Unfriended: The Yellow Man's Girlfriend (1919/20), Asian Presence and Antiracist Film Protests in the Weimar Republic (Zoom)

Immediately after the loss of the non-European colonies, a monumental colonial epic comprising eight parts was made in the now forgotten film city of Berlin-Woltersdorf. Shot at great expense, it tells the adventurous story of Maud Gregaards, a young woman as beautiful as she is white. In the first part of her world-spanning journey, the educator falls into the clutches of the brutal brothel owner Hai-Fung in the southern Chinese city of Canton. She is freed with the help of Dr. Kien Lung, who, however, also turns out to be a dubious character.

Dr. Tobias Nagl is a film and music critic, DJ, and has been Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada since 2007. Research interests: Film theory, silent film, avant-garde film, (post-)colonialism, Afro-German history before 1945, critical theory. Book publications: “The Uncanny Machine: Race and Representation in Weimar Cinema” (2009) and (with Janelle Blankenship) “European Vision: Small Cinemas in Transition” (2015).

Joshua Kwesi Aikins is a political scientist and human rights activist. He works as a research assistant in the department of “Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies” at the University of Kassel and is active, among other things, on the advisory board of the Initiative Black People in Germany (ISD). His research interests include cultural and political representation of the African diaspora, coloniality and the politics of memory. as well as empowerment and gender equality data. He is co-author of the“Afrozensus”, a survey of Black, African and Afrodiasporic people in Germany.