Organised and curated by Till Kadritzke and Carlos Kong (Princeton University/EXC 2020 Doctoral Fellow, April–September 2025), project Moving Images, Transforming Germanness: Race, Migration and Transnational Filmmaking in Germany, 1968–1989, Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies", supported by Constellations (Anna Luhn). In cooperation with Sinema Transtopia.

The film series adopts the 'Temporal Communities' approach to analyse works of literature as the outcome of specific practices entangled in global networks and reframes the history of German film by looking at a wide array of transnational filmmaking practices in Germany since the 1960s.

In following different trajectories of transnational filmmaking in Germany and assembling films created within transnational networks, the series seeks to shed light on the important work performed by archival initiatives, cultural projects and a growing number of individual curators, exhibitors, researchers and artists over the last years. They all have restored, studied and made available films that have been unseen or underappreciated in Germany, often because they fell through existing national categories.

The series consists of four evenings that each highlight a different dimension of or route to transnational filmmaking in Germany, such as filmmakers in exile, Turkish productions in Germany or international students at film schools. Each evening will combine the screening of one or two films with an introductory presentation or a talk following the screenings.

Programme:

Spielerinnen (2024, Aysun Bademsoy, 86 min)

Film Talk with Aysun Bademsoy

While most of the films screened and discussed within the series so far have been marginalized at the time of their production, recent years have seen a resurgent interest in the history of migration to Germany. In this last evening, we showcase the work of Aysun Bademsoy, a filmmaker who has observed and documented the complex lived realities across different generations of Turkish-German subjects. In her latest film Spielerinnen, she revisits the protagonists of two films she made in the 1990s, the members of the first Turkish-German women's football team. While Bademsoy continues to document their lives, the film is particularly interested in the relation to their daughters, asking how a new generation of Turkish-German women negotiates questions of identity and the realities of structural racism in Germany.

Previous Screenings:

Almanya Acı Vatan
Germany, Bitter Homeland
Şerif Gören, Turkey 1979, 90 min, Turkish with English subtitles

Introduction by Prof. Dr. Ömer Alkin (Applied Media and Communication Studies, Hochschule Niederrhein)

Film Schools in East and West Germany

Cultural Nationalism (1968, Skip Norman, 11 min)
On Africa (1970, Skip Norman, 38 min)
Oyoyo (1980, Chetna Vora, 45 min)

Introduction by Dr. Ying Sze Pek (DFG Graduiertenkolleg "Das Dokumentarische: Exzess und Entzug", Ruhr University Bochum)

Filmmakers in German Exile

Anton P. Cechov – Ein Leben (1981, Sohrab Shahid Saless, 95 min)

Introduction by Behrang Samsami (author and journalist)