Sunday, 23th June 2019
doors open: 7pm, starting: 7.30pm

Elliot Blue also makes their own films (http://www.facebook.com/Blue.Elliot/), some of them talk about black and queer empowerment in partly strong, partly extremely vulnerable ways. They have received international recognition by being on various film festivals around Europe and ‘Home?’ has also been screened in the USA as part of a University lecture. Apart from self-expression, Elliot also has another goal for their movies: Elliot hopes that those people who recognize themselves in their movies will feel heard, seen and appreciated.
In this sense after the workshop we warmly welcome you all to watch and to listen to what Elliot and the workshop participants have to say.

We will start with the workshop participants films – if they want to share them with us and then continue with Elliot’s films:

‘The Shore’, 2017, 1’57”, English spoken language.

‘Black is Me’, 2017, 3’46”, no spoken language.

‘Home?’, 2018, 17’43”, English spoken language, German subtitles.

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Due to limited space please be in time.

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Elliot Blue is a non-binary Filmmaker and light designer who has graduated from both their Bachelor of Film and Motion Design and their Bachelor in Camera and Lighting for Film in 2016 and 2017. Since then they work as a lighting technician and light designer in several theatres around Berlin (Dock11, Uferstudios, Theaterdiscounter) and are a freelance Filmmaker.
They also give film-workshops. For Elliot sharing knowledge about filmmaking is an opportunity to help people who get little to no adequate representation in media to empower themselves and to counter the power dynamics of a society that speaks about them but not with them and silences them in this process. This is why it is important to express oneself even if one doesn’t want to show it to anyone else but oneself.

June 5th 2019, 7pm, @ aquarium am Südblock

Guest speaker: Thiva Mohanathasan

The forcible displacement of people doesn’t just lead to the dislocation of bodies, but also to a shift of eating habits. Food cultures are reflective of specific geographies, topographies, climates, histories and cultures that evolve within/through them. But what happens when a people are forcefully pushed out of their ancient (cultural) landscapes only to find themselves confronted with, to them, new and unknown geographies as well as climates?

In the fifth episode of “Dissolving Territories – Cultural Geographies of a New Eelam”, we explore how people eat in exile, what meanings food are assigned to in exile, how geographic shifts can articulate themselves in changes within taste palates and what roles Tamil grocery stores play within such contexts. Central to our journey will be the history of transnational food chains and infrastructures which allowed for the present day bridging of climate and geographic boundaries to very much enable a Tamil cuisine in exile.

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Sinthujan Varatharajah initiated and conceptualised the series »Dissolving Territories« together with Iris Rajanayagam (director xart splitta). Varatharajah is an essayist, researcher and currently Open City Fellow of the Open Society Foundation and a PhD student in Political Geography (UCL). Sinthujan works and researches the geography of power(lessness) and spatial resistance practices and holds an MSc. in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies (LSE).

The event will take place in spoken German. The location is wheelchair accessible. A wheelchair accessible bathroom is available.

Wednesday, May 29th, 7pm

A film by Nahed Awwad

Documentary 52 min, 2008. Palestine/Turkey/Switzerland

Arabic with English subtitles

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director Nahed Awwad.

The Jerusalem Airport lies along the road that links Jerusalem to Ramallah. It has been occupied by Israeli army since 1967, at a 5 kilometer distance from Ramallah and 10 kilometer distance from Jerusalem. Today, to the east of the runway, a huge military checkpoint blocks the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, a dead end street.

Nahed Awwad discovers that life has not always been like this, and that this sad spot used to be a place where international aircrafts landed in the 1950s and 1960s, when Palestinians traveled freely. The happy images and testimonies of the past contrast bitterly with those of the present where access is denied to the aviation zone that is now being besieged behind barbed wire and soon will be trapped behind the Israeli Separation Wall.

Nahed Awwad goes to meet this place, evoking the past in order to have a better apprehension of the present: today’s Palestinian reality that is marked by forgetfulness.

World premier: Vision Du Reel film festival, Nyon-Swizerland. Screened at the film market Pavllion Les Cinemas Du Sud- Cannes film festival.

Further Information: www.nahedawwad.com/5-minutes-from-home/

The event will take place in English and Arabic spoken language. If necessary, translation into spoken German can be provided during the Q&A.

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Nahed Awwad is an independent filmmaker; She has worked with well- known Palestinian filmmakers, local Palestinian TV stations and later international networks. In 2004 she got her film diploma from the European film college in Denmark and has released eight documentary films between experimental, short and feature length. Awwad’s films were screened at various international film festivals, including HotDocs film festival, Canada 2013, Dubai international film festival in 2012, Vision du Reel Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland in 2005 and 2008 and the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 (Cinema Sud). In 2009 she was granted the International Trailblazer Tribute -Middle East Trailblazer in MIPDOC.

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اخراج ناهد عواد

وثائقي 52 دقيقة، 2008. فلسطين/تركيا/سويسرا

اللغة عربي مع ترجمة للأنجليزية.

ملخص عن الفيلم

يقع مطار القدس على طريق القدس – رام الله  والذي تم احتلاله من قبل الجيش الإسرائيلي سنة 1967 على بعد خمس دقائق من رام الله و10 دقائق من القدس.

أما اليوم، فيوجد على نهاية مدرج المطار من الشرق حاجز قلنديا العسكري والذي يفصل طريق القدس-رام الله فبات نهاية طريق مسدود.

تكتشف ناهد عواد أن هذا المكان الحزين لم يكن دوما كذلك، فقد كان يوماً يستقبل طائرات من كل أنحاء العالم وخصوصا من الوطن العربي وبشكل يومي في الخمسينات والستينات، وذلك عندما كان الفلسطينيون يسافرون الى العالم بحرية. تتناقض الصور القديمة للمطار بشكل واضح ومؤلم مع واقع المكان المرير المحاصر تماما بالشيك وقريبا سوف يتم تطويقه بجدار الفصل العنصري الإسرائيلي.

تعود ناهد عواد لهذا المكان لتستحضر ماضيه المشرق في محاولة لفهم وسبر حاضره والهروب من واقعه الأليم اليوم.

العرض الأولي العالمي: مهرجان سينما الواقع في نيون –سويسرا.

وفي سوق الأفلام بفيليون لس سينما الشرق- في مهرجان كان السينمائي.

 

Not: ​Race vs. ​Class
But rather: ​Race and ​Class!

Wednesday 15th of May 2019
9.30am – 6pm
​
Location: Nachbarschaftshaus Urbanstraße, Urbanstraße 21, 10961 Berlin.
How to get there: www.nachbarschaftshaus.de/kontakt/anfahrt/

We want to reclaim the conversation about class because any conversation about class is incomplete unless we also talk about race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, national and migration status. The aim of this all-day event it to open up a space for exchange in order to approach class/classism from an intersectional perspective. In various inputs, workshops and discussion rounds, a number of topics will be broached, topics that deal with the intertwining of race and class as well as further categories of discrimination and oppression.

The thematic focal points will be:
★ The link between colonialism, racism and capitalism
★ Care work
★ Reproductive justice
★ Public space

All topics deal in particular with questions of participation, exclusion and inclusion as well as barriers to access in the context  of race and class. Our aim is explicitly to take ordinary conversations about classism and include categories like race and migration. Our aim is to  illustrate how race and class are interwoven as social categories in a wide variety of areas – on an institutional, structural as well as everyday level.

This event is a cooperation between xart splitta, the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ) and the Bildungswerk of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and will be held together with the Nachbarschaftshaus Urbanstrasse (NHU). It is part of the Shared Spaces project of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Programme

9:30 – 10:00  Registration

10:00 – 10:10  Welcome Address from xartsplitta and Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ)

10:10 – 11:10  Stories About Class  with
★ Emine Aslan
★ Sandra Selimović (Actress, Director and Singer)
★ Tuğba Tanyılmaz & Ed Greve (i-Päd and Migrationsrat Berlin)

11:15 – 12:00  Input on the History of Class, Migration, (Post)Colonialism and Racism with Sinthujan Varatharajah

12:00 -13:00  Lunch

13:00 – 14:30  Care-Work
★ Input by Collectif 360° and Discussion
★ Parallel Workshop carried out by Tuğba Tanyılmaz & Ed Greve

14:35 – 16:05  Reproductive Justice

★ Input by Dinah de Roquet-Bons (Transgender Europe, Int. Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe & Global Network of Sex Work Projects) and Discussion
★ Parallel Workshop carried out by Aylin Turgay (Alice-Salomon-Hochschule)

16:10 – 17:40  Public Space
★ Input by Céline Barry (Each One Teach One and the campaign “Ban Racial Profiling”) and  Discussion
★ Parallel Workshop carried out by Saboura Naqshband (Berlin Muslim Feminists) & Amina Aziz  (Podcast Host of “Mit freundlichen Grüßen”)

17:40 – 18:00  End

19:00  Film Screening of “Remue-Ménage Dans La Sous-Traitance” (Big Sweep-up in  Subcontracting)

About the film:
March 2002, Paris. Cleaners doing subcontracted work in Accor hotels go on strike. Most of the strikers are women with West African origins and are fighting for their rights for the first time in their life. Shot over a 4 year period, the film outlines different struggles where with few resources but a will, collectively organized individuals disrupt the law of submissiveness prevailing in the world of  work, particularly in subcontracted work.   

**Within the framework of this event, there is a possibility that photos, sound and video recordings will be made for publishing  by the organisers.**

Participation free of charge.
Registration is required! Please register under the following link

Programme flyer here