How Can We See (each other)?

Historically, the main routes of the Silk Road connected China with Central and West Asia, up to North Africa. These cross-borders exchanges went beyond the economic transfer of goods, transporting and thus influencing the cultures along with it too.

The film series How Can We See (each other)? searches beyond eurocentrism for (pop)cultural, social and political connections of an “East-East referencing” and takes a look at transcultural relations among these regions. By pairing filmmakers from different areas, we hope to create a form of transnational dialogue between artists and filmmakers. From Hong Kong to Cairo, Urumchi to Kobanê, and Beijing to a small village in Morocco, the films performatively cross gender boundaries and national affiliations. Through "cultural drag", reenactments and other transgressive strategies, the films open up a space in which cultural identity can be conceptualised in new ways, beyond questions of potential differences and commonalities. The programme contributes to an understanding of a political resistance that equally reflects the power of cultural, national, ethnic and gender categories and imagines their dissolution.

Funded by Hauptstadt Kulturfonds

Community Partners:
Korientation
Wir für Hongkong

Special Thanks:
Kurdish Film Festival Berlin
Times Art Center
Videoart at Midnight
Michael Dreyer

Popo Fan is a Berlin-based Chinese diaspora filmmaker, curator and writer. His films include queer activism documentaries and scripted, sex-positive shorts. For more than a decade, he has organized the Beijing Queer Film Festival and founded the Queer University Video Training Camp in China.