Authenticity Sucks! A Biased Manifesto from Future Documentarists
Image generated by Open AI DALL-E2 Students taking the course on Documentary Forms (Film 125 / German 184) in Fall 2022, taught by Deniz Göktürk and Qingyang Freya Zhou, discovered possibilities of engagement with the world through documentary cinema, old and new. The class conversations culminated in a manifesto in which future documentarists contest all obsessions […]
Work in Single Takes, Vol. 2
Students taking the course on Documentary Forms (Film 125 / German 184) in Fall 2022, taught by Deniz Göktürk and Qingyang Freya Zhou, learned about everyday practices of documentary production: filmmakers observing, participating, and reflecting, as they record how human and non-human actors work, live, and play. To gain hands-on experience, the young documentarists made two-minute single […]
“Auf den Trümmern das Paradies”? Ilija Trojanow’s Utopian Prerogative
wie eine meuterei bricht das glück, wie ein löwe aus. ——Hans Magnus Enzensberger: utopia In this blog post, Berkeley Ph.D. student Anna Lynn Dolman reflects on Ilija Trojanow’s Mosse Lecture on “The Utopian Prerogative,” specifically how literature can sketch a topography of the future and indeed affect the world we live in – not by […]
“Nation of Assimilation”
What does it mean to make an investigative documentary on one’s family history? How could the filmmaker and her interviewees represent the joyful and eventful, as well as the painful and awkward episodes of their most intimate past? In this blog post, Berkeley Senior and L.A. native Veronica Jacques reflects on the process of making […]
Behind the Apron: An Investigatory Dive into the Lives of Overlooked “Essential Workers”
Scan products. Put items in bags. Collect payments. The repetitive and monotonous movements of supermarket cashiers often went unnoticed by the average customer — until the pandemic introduced the practice of self-checkout, which reminds us of the indispensable labor of these once “invisible” essential workers, who, it turns out, also live colorful lives outside of […]
Polyphone Auseinandersetzungen mit kulturellen Bildern, Vorurteilen und Rassismus im Hörspiel “Bitmemiş – not finished yet” (2019) von Ralf Haarmann und Tuğsal Moğul
Picture Source: Westdeutscher Rundfunk Guest contributor Monika Preuß (Technische Universität Dortmund), author of the MGP blog post series on German radio plays, analyzes the portrayal of lived experiences of Turkish German immigrants across generations in Ralf Haarmann’s recent radio play, Bitmemiş – not finished yet (2019). Das Hörspiel Bitmemiş – not finished yet des Komponisten […]
Writing as an (Im)migrant: Calls to Action in Fatma Aydemir’s “Work”
In the latest blog post inspired by Berkeley’s “Archives of Migration” conversation series and Prof. Deniz Göktürk’s German and American Studies seminar on “Cultures of Migration,” Kavina Peters (Berkeley Freshman, Environmental Economics and Policy major) analyzes Fatma Aydemir’s short essay from that volume, focusing on how Aydemir challenges her readers to reflect on their own […]
Multilingual Lives, Monolingual Institutions
Picture copyright Ⓒ Anna Becker In the latest blog post inspired by author Olga Grjasnowa’s book talk “Die Macht der Mehrsprachigkeit” and Prof. Deniz Göktürk’s German and American Studies seminar on “Cultures of Migration,” Anna Becker (Berkeley Senior, Interdisciplinary Migration Studies Major) critiques the disjuncture between ethnoculturally diverse student populations and the lack of high-quality […]
Minds of Their Own: Documenting Voices of Migrants to the GDR
Picture Source: Eigensinn im Bruderland Helen Schiff, visiting student researcher from the University of Konstanz, analyzes a prize-winning multimedia online documentary, Eigensinn im Bruderland (2019), which presents a humanistic view on the multifaceted experiences of Immigrants of Color to the former GDR in a way that contests stereotypical narratives of omnipotent repression in the East […]
The Perception of Language in Countries of Migration
Picture Source: Etsy Inspired by author Olga Grjasnowa’s talk on “Die Macht der Mehrsprachigkeit” and by Prof. Deniz Göktürk’s German and American Studies course on “Cultures of Migration,” L.A. native Emily Yepez (Berkeley Freshman, Chemical Biology major) reflects on her own experience with multilingualism as a Mexican American and critiques how the connection between native […]