Antonio - Wo ist er zu Hause? + Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter

Antonio - Wo ist er zu Hause?
Hans Rolf Strobel, BRD 1974, 17 min. OF, 16mm

Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter 
Yüksel Yavuz, Deutschland 1995, 53 min. OmdU

In Antonio - Wo ist er zu Hause (Where is he at Home?), 13-year-old Antonio from southern Italy acts as moderator and translator, guiding the audience through the economic living, working and family conditions both here and there. Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter (My Father, the Guest Worker) is about Yüksel Yavuz's family history, which expands to become a social history: His father left in 1968 and worked for 16 years at a Hamburg shipyard; his mother "took care of the running of everyday life" in the Kurdish part of Turkey. “I saw that my father worked like a maniac to leave traces that would compensate for the traces on his body.” We watch on as tanks belonging to the Turkish army race through the barren mountain landscape (the Hamburg shipyard didn't give permission to film). (MB)

Madeleine Bernstorff lives in Berlin, creates film programs (often in collaboration) and works as a teacher and author, e.g. of Transnationales Lernen an der dffb. In 2016/2017 she supervised the production of 23 short video spots Unraveling the NSU Complex! with the SPOTS group.

Yüksel Yavuz was born in Karakoçan in eastern Turkey in 1964 and has been living in Germany since 1980. He studied sociology and economics in Hamburg. With My Father, The Guest Worker, Yavuz presented his first cinematic work, which won several prizes. Other films, which have also won several awards, include: Aprilkinder (1998), Kleine Freiheit (2003), Close up – Kurdistan (2007), Longing for Istanbul (2010) Hêvî (2012), AMED – Memory of a City (2016).