Film program organized by Caspar Stracke (Germany) and Jaro Straub (Germany)

 

As part of :TERRITORIES UNDER MY SKIN

Performances, film screenings and conversations reflecting the history of the African Quarter, Berlin / Wedding

conceived by Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Jaro Straub and Ella Ziegler

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The film program „Territories under my Skin / Re-visited" is looking at the manifold questions, which the history of Namibia and its past and present (post-)colonial entanglements with Germany are posing to contemporary filmmakers from Namibia, Germany and elsewhere. The film program is taking its viewing location - City Kino Wedding in the African Quarter in Berlin - as a starting point to expand the post-colonial circles of inquiries. Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper explore German colonialism at the site of the nearby Schrebergartenverein. What begins in Lüderitzstrasse, Berlin eventually brings us to Lüderitz, Namibia or ǃNamiǂNûs.

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Socialist ties between SWAPO and GDR revive a forgotten political relationship in Laura Horelli’s work. Followed by Katrin Winkler, who has conducted intensive research into the question of how historical events and their consequences are kept in public consciousness - drawing a relationship between Namibia’s commemoration of the Nama/Herero genocide and the removal of old colonial monuments. Caspar Stracke examines the notion of home in the context of remnants of colonialist architecture in Swakopmund and Lüderitz.

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From here the perspective reverses with accounts from contemporary Namibian artists and filmmakers who are reflecting upon postcolonial and post-apartheid realities and identities in today’s Namibia with its diverse ethnicities, ranging from Aawambo, OvaHerero and Nama to white descendants with German/European heritage.

 

Nicola Brandt foregrounds involuntary memory and way that unresolved traumas of colonial violence and denial break out in ordinary engagements. Hildegard Titus documented the voices of young Namibians of various backgrounds and their relation to their heritage and identity. Tuli Mekondjo juxtaposes gestures, objects and rituals of indigenous belief systems with their colonial counterparts. Finally, Joel Haikali imagined a journey by two individuals traveling through the vast Namibian outback to reflect on themselves while conjuring up a psychological landscape of uncertainty.

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Café Togo | Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper D | 2018  |  27 min

Café Togo looks at the efforts to change street names with colonial connotations in the so-called Afrikanisches Viertel (African Quarter) in Berlin-Wedding. According to Berlin’s street law, every street named after a person honors that person. Petersallee, Lüderitzstraße, and Nachtigalplatz bear the names of persons whose biographies are tainted by the blood of the victims of German colonialism. According to the law, streets that do not correspond to today’s understanding of democracy and human rights should be renamed. Café Togo follows the visions of the Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed, who is working for a paradigm shift in the politics of state symbols: away from honoring colonial criminals, toward commemorating the victims and the resistance and freedom fighters of the German colonial regime. His goal: a multidimensional politics of memory within postcolonial perspectives. Abdel Amine Mohammed therefore wrote the story “With Colonial Love.” It is this story, along with a reference to the NS propaganda film Carl Peters (1941), which narrates the founding of German East Africa, that forms the basis for Café Togo.

 

 

Namibia Today | Laura Horelli D/FI  |  2018  |  21min

Seven people wait in an underground station below Karl-Marx-Allee in former East Berlin. Billboards line the walls, each combining a front page of “Namibia Today” with associative material. “Namibia Today” was a journal of the Namibian liberation movement, which was printed and distributed by the GDR during times of military confrontation with South Africa. SWAPO’s (South West Africa People’s Organisation) editorial board was forced to operate from exile in Angola, and without the ideologically motivated help of the GDR the mass production of the periodical (1980–1985) would not have been possible. Rushing underground trains pick up the slow moving shot between the billboards and the protagonists, between fragments of image and speech. The participants with their memories and diverse ways of storytelling stand still in the movement.

 

 

Performing Monuments | Katrin Winkler (D) | 2018 | 15 min

With spoken word and poetry by Nesindano „Khoes“ Namises, contributions by Ester Utjiua Muinjangue, chairperson of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation, as well as with music and performance by Cecilia Oletu Nghidengwa.

Katrin Winkler conducts intensive research into the question of how historical events and their consequences are kept in public consciousness with visual strategies and demonstrative actions, and what determines the visibility or invisibility of individual discourses. Her artistic research in terms of concepts such as monument, memory, recognition and responsibility examines how history is written, what social conditions are behind it and what critical potential is formulated. Winkler examines complex political contexts from various perspectives and combines her search for traces with archive materials, personal interviews and literary quotations. Her most recent work performing monuments is a continuation of her thematic examination of the consequences of colonialism, genocide and apartheid in Namibia. Winkler draws attention to today‘s commemoration of the genocide of the Herero and Nama by the German colonial power (1904-1908) as well as to an old colonial monument and celebrations commemorating Namibia‘s struggle for independence. This is combined with images from telescopes used to measure cosmic gamma rays. Contributions by the spoken word poet Nesindano „Khoes“ Namises, by Ester Utjiua Muinjangue, Chairwoman of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation, and by the musician and performer Cecilia Oletu Nghidengwa additionally ask how memory is formed. (text by Michaela Richter)

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Grüße aus Kramersdorf  (work-in-progress) | Caspar Stracke (D) |  2021 | 7 min

Caspar Stracke examines the notion of home -in the context of remnants of colonialist architecture in Swakopmund and Lüderitz.

What does it mean to make a place one’s home within walls that carry a contested past, to live in a house that should  never haven been been build here?

“…A bird born from me who builds a nest in my ruins. Before me, and in the rubble of the enchanting world around me. ..” (M.D.)

 

 

Indifference  | Nicola Brandt (NAM)  | 2014 | 14 min

Indifference foregrounds involuntary memory and the way that unresolved traumas of colonial violence and denial break out in ordinary engagements. The multiscreen video work explores such moments in the lives of two women through fragments of their everyday experiences. The women reside in the small coastal town Swakopmund in Namibia. A Herero woman makes her living from tourists taking photos of her in traditional dress. On her way to work, she walks past Ovaherero and Nama mass graves. A German-Namibian woman in her nineties tries to maintain her illusions about the Second World War and the events leading up to it, recalling a romantic encounter in the cemetery near her home, adjacent to the unmarked graves.

The stories are accompanied by large-scale triptychs of the Namibian desert coastline and its hinterland. Among these deceitfully beautiful, derelict landscapes are places of historical violence. The sites are largely unmarked and their identity has been preserved primarily through personal memories and oral histories. Indifference shows the extent to which the guilt of those who have inherited the German colonial legacy has not been adequately addressed.

 

 

Us Now | Hildegard Titus (NAM) | 2018 | 5 min

Namibia’s history did not begin with independence 28 years ago.

It did not even begin when colonialism or apartheid first took over this region that was once called South West Africa. Our journey began thousands of years ago, as our ancestors left their marks on the world in caves to be seen and remembered for millennia to come. It began when our ancestors held ceremonies and feasts for every aspect of life, from birth to death. It began long before our cultures were brought together under the new utopian vision of a free and equal Namibia.

 While we were focused on celebrating freedom and overcoming a past plagued by dark moments – war, genocide, apartheid – we forgot to truly listen to each other and heal wounds that had begun to fester. Tribalism, racism, colourism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and xenophobia continue to stain our country. We spend more time breaking each other down than listening to one another.

 Us Now is a conversation and a dialogue for remembering and healing. It is an invitation to hear the voices of young Namibians from various backgrounds expressing their stories, their feelings, their aspirations, the way the relate to their heritage and identity, and the way we all relate to each other.

 Looking back into Namibia’s old history books we can see the ways colonial images depicted and tried to define our existence and way of life. Today we define them for ourselves.

We are more than a caption: ‘Herero ’, ‘Nama’, We are a history, a present, and a brighter future. This is us now.

 

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Kalunga ka Nangobe (God of Nangobe) | Tuli Mekondjo (NAM) | 2020 | 3:53

Tuli Mekondjo's live performance piece serves as a basis fora re-interpretation of the theme in the filmic medium.

The film explores and builds on an improvised narrative that considers

ovambo cultural and spiritual identity in the context of a pre and post-colonial history - more specifically through the missionary influence used in its name.

By simultaneous depiction of past and present as one, the film enables a

dialogue between an (ancient) sangoma/healer and a (modern-day convert-

ed) nun, underlining the apparent and non-apparent ties between the two -

which are after-all still one and the same.

 

 

Invisibles (Kaunapawa) |  Joel Haikali (NAM) | 2019 | 16 min

Two individuals run into each other at a low point in their lives and go on a journey of self-love and freedom. Traveling the majestic Namibian outback, landscape of the psyche of a post-Apartheid nation and theirs, they find their place.

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 Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von:

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