Perspectives on Cultural Memory: Aleida Assmann’s Berkeley Visit
Aleida Assmann’s recent visit to the University of California, Berkeley, October 28-29, 2013, brought local and academic communities together to participate in discussion on cultural memory and dealing with the past. Chair of English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Konstanz and a leading scholar in cultural memory studies, Assmann began her two […]
Aleida Assmann: Film and Lecture (Oct 28 & 29)
Circulating Memory events with Aleida Assmann (University of Konstanz, Germany) — Film Screening and Lecture Film Screening — US Premiere!: 10/28, 5-7pm, Dwinelle B-4 Anfang aus dem Ende: Die Flakhelfergeneration (Beginning out of an Ending) 2013, documentary, 85 min, directed by Aleida Assmann, in German with English subtitles, followed by discussion
Film “Shahada”
“With Film, Afghan-German Is a Foreigner at Home” The New York Times Online
Feo Aladag’s “When We Leave”
Originally Die Fremde, Feo Aladag’s Turkish-German drama When We Leave won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The star of the film, Sibel Kekilli, who won an award for her role in Fatih Akin’s Head-On, also won a Founders Award for Best Actress in […]
Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen
Unlike Head On and The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin’s most recent film Soul Kitchen is a comedy. The film focuses on Zinos, a restaurant owner who is forced to employ a drunken chef played by Head On‘s Birol Unel. The chef insists on cooking “real” food, and while this appeals to Zinos he loses […]
Same Same but Different
A new film by German film maker Detlef Buck, centered around a love story between a German man and a Cambodian ex-prostitute wins the Piazza Grande at Locarno. Buck’s comments on his “modern love story” show a progressive way of thinking. He says this story is “just an example of those who are in the […]
Burhan Qurbani’s “Shahada”
What is Islam? What does it mean to be a good Muslim? Link to Video Here The 2:04-minute trailer to the film “Shahada,” release date as of yet unknown, opens with two very evocative questions relevant to much of the multi-cultural world today. This German film, featured at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival, was […]
At Home Abroad: German Film and Migration – A History of Perception
This website dedicates a page to the history of German migration through cinema. German Films provides a look at how foreigners have shaped German cinema through the decades, and yields excellent examples of German films that address the shift in the perspective of German citizenship and the migrant worker, such as “Angst fressen Seele auf” […]
Asia at the Berlinale
Asia has a strong presence at the 60th annual Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival). As this article shows, Asian films will be both opening and closing the festival, with roughly two dozen more shown in between. I find this article interesting, because (except for India) Asia has not had too strong of a presence in […]
Günther Wallraff Blacks Up for New Film “Schwarz auf Weiß”
Official Film Website Spiegel: “Kritik an neuem Wallraff-Film. Einfach nur der Fremde” Deutsche Welle: “New film aims to uncover latent, and blatant, German racism” Tagesschau: “Interview: Ein angemalter Weißer ist kein Schwarzer”