A sea between languages – four German-Tunisians search for words. A collaborative translation of the poem [Tunis] by Adrian Kasnitz, written in German about the Tunisian capital, into Tunisian Arabic sets in motion a heated discussion about language, culture, heritage and politics.… >>>
Bitter with a Shy Taste of Sweetness contrasts the fragmented past of filmmaker Saif Alsaegh growing up in Baghdad with his surreal California present. California, the dream land of his childhood and youth, rendered on TV screens in a glaring color palette exists in a neverland between remembrance and actuality – a color-corrected fata morgana ready to be inhabited in reality.… >>>
A family history as a collection of possible narrations: Monira Al Solh constructs her autobiographical film as a number of beginnings of stories which could be told this way or many other ways. “In this work, I lay the impossibility to make a work about my family members and their histories in a film, by creating narratives which I fictionalize partly, in order to distance myself from the pretention that facts can be narrated in one way, and in order to assimilate those family traumas, related to a harsh, criminal and sexist political and social ground.” (Monira al Solh)… >>>
“C'est une étoile qui tombe dans la Mer Méditerranée.“ (It's a star that falls into the Mediterranean Sea) writes Man Ray in the synopsis of his film “L'Étoile de Mer” (The Starfish) made in 1928. Maya Schweizer’s work of the same name is an experimental navigation in the Mediterranean Sea, mingling underwater shots, silent movies, the author’s own video archive and underwater shots, superimposed texts and a sound collage. An image and sound essay about the act of forgetting and the sea as a flowing immaterial space that seems conducive to this forgetting.… >>>