»Decolonial Visions in Diaspora Cinema« | Curated by Sun-Ju Choi & Feng Mei Heberer, in Cooperation with Dekoloniale - was bleibt?! / korientation e.V.
Colonial history is not in the past. It shapes memory and knowledge archives in the present - what we remember and how. Official narratives that normalize hegemonic dominance and exploitation need to be revised from the perspective of postcolonial cultural productions. As part of Dekoloniale 2024, the film series Decolonial Visions in Diaspora Cinema sheds light on the Asia Pacific region as a site where various overlapping forms of colonization exist. The focus is on works by Asian-diasporic filmmakers that open up alternatives to colonial knowledge in and from the ambivalence of diasporic positioning. In four screenings, each followed by a discussion, diaspora will be negotiated as a condition of possibility for critical-creative, decolonial memory work and cultural practice. (SJC + FMH)
Feng-Mei Heberer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. She is a faculty affiliate of the department’s Asian Film and Media Initiative. Her research interests lie at the junctures of labor, transnational migration, and Asian diaspora, and her work draws on the insights of ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and critical area studies.
Sun-Ju Choi studied Postcolonial Studies and scriptwriting. She has curated various film festivals and exhibitions and also works as script editor, dramaturge and diversity consultant. Sun-Ju Choi has been engaged in the field of anti-racism and is a board member of the association Vielfalt im Film e.V. and korientation - Network for Asian-German Perspectives.
Thursday, 21.11.2024, 8pm
Nervous Translation
Shireen Seno, Philippines, 2018, 90 min. Tagalog with English subtitles, digital
The screening will be followed by a talk with Shireen Seno.
Late 1988, post-dictatorship Philippines. Eight year-old Yael, shy to a fault, lives in her own private world. Left to her own devices while her mother assembles shoes at the local shoe factory, Yael cooks miniature meals for herself, sometimes forgetting about leftovers for dinner in the fridge. In the evenings, she cuts her mother’s white hair for 25 centavos a strand while they watch soap operas on television. Yael only knows her father through his voice through letters in the form of cassette tapes which he sends back every now and then from Saudi Arabia. Their boombox sometimes ‘eats tape’, but this does not stop Yael from secretly listening to Father’s voice letters. One night, she accidentally records over a voice tape meant for her mother. (SJC + FMH)
Mittwoch, 27.11.2024
The Lake and the Lake
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy, India, 2019, 38 min. Kannada with English subtitles, digital
An Asian Ghost Story
Bo Wang, Hong Kong, Netherlands, 2023, 37 min. Cantonese, English with English subtitles, digital
The screening will be followed by an talk with Sindhu Thirumalaisamy and Bo Wang (online)
The Lake and the Lake orients to the ‘toxic commons’ around a polluted urban lake in Bangalore, India. Drawing connections between the landscape image, hyper-development, environmentalism and xenophobia, the film asks: what constitutes a ‘nature’ worth protecting? Departing from a 1965 United States embargo on the hair trade known as the “Communist Hair Ban”, An Asian Ghost Story traces the haunting memories of Asia's late 20th-century modernization. (SJC + FMH)
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy is an artist and filmmaker whose work responds to spatial and narrative processes of enclosure. Her films, installations, writing, and sound compositions seek a cinematic language of ecological resistance and care.
Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker and researcher based in Amsterdam. He works mostly with video, film and installation.
Dienstag, 03.12.2024
Fly in Power
Yin Q, Yoon Grace Ra (USA/Australia 2023, 78min)
Thursday, 12.12.2024, SHORTS & DISCUSSION
Oh Butterfly, Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2022, OmE, 20min
Hundsstern steigt ab, Aykan Safoglu, 2021, OmE, 12min
