Curated by Karina Griffith and Tobias Hering

Black in the Western World
Wanjiru Kinyanjui, Germany 1992, 23 min, German, English, 16mm

Die Schönheitsverschwörung (The Beauty Conspiracy)
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Germany 1994, 12 min. German, English

All That Glitters
Auma Obama, Germany 1993, 21 min. English, 16mm

Preceded by a performance by Mmakgosi Kgabi

Terms of Encounter revisits an intersectional program on “migrant presents” at the DFFB and imagines how it might be tied to unwritten Black perspectives in Germany, past and future. The film collective Blickpilotin eV. (Kathrin Schulz, Regina Holzkamp née Schütze, Maria Schmidt, Stefanie Hetze and Madeleine Bernstorff) was founded in 1989 to promote and program feminist art house cinema. In 1998, Schütze and Beate Spille organized a screening of films directed in Germany by women stemming from Kenya and Zimbabwe who were studying at the DFFB, under the title “Begegnungen mit afrikanischen Regisseurinnen (Encounters with African Women Directors).” The program took place at Emitaay (formerly K.O.B.), a squatted house and cultural space on Potsdamer Straße in Berlin-Schöneberg, and featured student and independent works by Wanjiru Kinyanjui, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Auma Obama, with a keynote from Marie-Hélène Gutberlet. Terms of Encounter reframes the historic program with a performance by Mmakgosi Kgabi that introduces Griffith and Hering’s early research into the films of Monalisa A.J. Godeffroy, a film student from Swaziland (today Eswatini) who enrolled at the DFFB in 1977. With special thanks to Birgit Kohler, Branwen Okpako, Michael Meert, Don Edkins and Priscilla Layne.

Mmakgosi Kgabi is a filmmaker and actress. She will start the scriptwriting program at DFFB in 2026.

Karina Griffith is an artistic researcher and guest professor of Intersectional Visual and Media Theory at the Berlin University of Art (UdK). She is part of the curatorial team for Berlinale Forum Expanded.

Tobias Hering is a freelance curator and writer. He lives in Berlin, is married, and has a son.