We, the migrants, are not wanderers in foreign lands; we are the living archives of erased histories. Our presence disrupts the carefully constructed illusion that these lands were ever made for just one kind of person. In Germany, where the far right rises and hate speech poisons the air, we, the migrants, emphasize the urgency of delving into the colonial past to understand its present relevance so that we can weave alternative futures.
“With whose blood were my eyes crafted?” This question by Donna Haraway guides us to reflect on the implicit (and explicit) violences in our own practices of visualization, questioning the myth of objective, neutral knowledge built on silenced voices. Our eyes may be heirs to a colonial gaze, yet they hold the potential to carry disobedient perspectives – ones that transcend the dichotomies designed to subordinate our bodies.
The selected short films explore the colonial past and present to unveil the roots of racist, discriminatory, and anti-gender discourses still alive today. They reflect on how these narratives shape us as migrants in this city, and how we can rise against them.
FLORENCIA BELLONE – CURATOR
15TH MARCH – 6PM
SELECTED SHORT FILMS
JACKFRUIT
by Thúy Trang Nguyen
Jackfruit tells the story of a gender-fluid person caught between two worlds – the Vietnamese diaspora and queer Berlin.
LERNE DEUTSCH IN MEINER KÜCHE
by Popo Fan
As part of the series of “4 Wände Berlin” (4 Walls Berlin), this video is a YouTube-style video that resembles a DIY video combining cooking and language learning, and at the end show one of my racist encounters because of COVID-19.
WE ARE ALL KANAKEN
by Kervin Saint Pere Germany
Kervin Saint Pere opens the archive’s fine wooden drawer to search for the word “Kanake.” He views it as not only a bygone construct of German colonialization, but also as a violent paradigm of the present.
JUSTICE FOR RITA
by Hana Khalil
Rita came to Germany from Kenya in 2012 and lived in a refugee shelter (lager) in Hohenleipisch in Brandenburg. She was reported missing on the 7th of April 2019 by her friends and family. The police only searched the forest near her accommodation after the association Opferperspektive e.V. put public pressure on them – they finally started searching on the 11th of June. The.Rita’s remains were eventually found in the forest, which could only be identified as her after a DNA test.
RECIPE FOR RAW STORIES
by Nina Cavalcanti
Cis Visibility Day in the Arts is the sequel to the documentary. The film reflects on different types of liberation and especially on women’s bodies dealing with patriarchal power dynamics, while, in a personal cartography, traces my Arab roots. The video was motivated by a dish. A recipe that my grandmother ended up not giving to me before she passed away, which came back to me recently through the hands of a Palestinian/Syrian poet
