1. Program
  2. /
  3. Asian Presences in the Colonial Metropolis of Berlin
  4. /
  5. Sumurun

Sumurun

Ernst Lubitsch, Germany 1920, 103 Min., OV with English subs
Followed by a talk with Dr. Kien Nghi Ha, Qinna Shen and Sun-ju Choi

Original version with Murnau Stiftung BlueRay restored soundtrack

The screening will be introduced by Prof. Dr. Qinna Shen. Introduction: A Berliner's One Arabian Night: Lubitsch's Orientalist Parody

Unlike Joe May, Ernst Lubitsch was not only a master of Weimar cinema, but also became a star director in Hollywood. In his early film work, he repeatedly used Oriental and Roma stereotypes to advance his career in the entertainment industry. Already filmed and dramatized by Max Reinhardt for the theater in 1910, just ten years later Lubitsch staged the material again in a monumental manner with a star cast at the Ufa studios in Berlin-Tempelhof. Sumurun is Lubitsch's version of One Thousand and One Nights – a jealousy drama set in the pre-modern Orient that plays with European fantasies about the harem, enslaved dancers and oriental despotism.

Qinna Shen is Associate Professor of German at Bryn Mawr College. Her research focuses on twentieth-century German culture, with an emphasis on visual studies and Asian German studies. Her edited volume „Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia“ appeared in 2014. She is currently working on two monographs: “Jiny Lan and the Art of Subversion” and “Film and Cold War Diplomacy: China and the Two Germanys, 1949–1989,” as well as co-editing a volume „New Narratives of Asian-German Film History“.

Sun-ju Choi studied literature at the University of Cologne and screenwriting at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Her dissertation,"Vater Staat und Mutter Partei: Familienkonzepte und Repräsentation von Familie im nordkoreanischen Film" was published in 2017. She serves as an honorary member of the board of directors for ndo e.V. and korientation e.V.