Reopening

Due to limited capacity, the film program is only open to invited guests. Join us for the party after 10pm!

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Inventur - Metzstraße 11
Želimir Žilnik, FRG 1975, 9 min., OV with English subtitles

Monument of distance
Azar Saiyar, Finland 2018, 7 min., OV with English subtitles

Off-White Tulips
Aykan Safoğlu, Germany/ Turkey 2013, 24 Min., OV with English subtitles

K-SARAM I: Tale of the pig head
Alisa Berger, Germany/ Russia/ South Korea 2021, 28 min., OV with English subtitles

SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA reopens with a short film program dedicated to physical and imaginary spaces, moments and entanglements suggestive of possible transtopias. Želimir Žilnik's Inventur – Metzstrasse 11, made during his stay in West Germany, presents the inhabitants of an old tenement house in Munich. Mainly so-called guest workers from Turkey, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia, plus members of their families, speak about their experiences and expectations. Monument of Distance is inspired by a found video featuring Googoosh, a popular Iranian-Azerbaijani singer, performing the song Ayrılıq (Separation) that grows, in the words of filmmaker Saiyar, “into a monument of distance – a presentation of diaspora disconnection, images, memory and mixed identification”. Off-White Tulips is a fictional dialogue with James Baldwin. By focusing on the writer’s stay in Istanbul, Safoğlu layers images and motifs, merging them into an associative narrative that explores biographical links between Baldwin and himself. Centered around Koryo-saram, a Korean diaspora community living in Rostov-on-Don, K-SARAM I: Tale of the pig head traces “Jesa”, a shamanistic memorial ancestral ritual. Both inter-subjective and deeply personal, the film treats tales of migration, diaspora and death with humor and lightness. (CS)