Meteorlar (NL/TR 2017, Gürcan Keltek) / I’m not a Witch (GB/F/D 2017 Rungano Nyoni)
Woah, what a show! Thanks a lot to Tomaga, UT Connewitz and everyone involved and of course thanks to all of you for coming around!
Today we’ll continue at Luru Kino with two films that we found particularly important to show and are happy to have in our programme. At 8pm there will be the German premiere of Gürcan Keltek’s METEORLAR – a very up-to-the-minute film as it deals with the situation of Kurdish people in the southeast in Turkey. METEORLAR intermingles documentary, journalistic and fiction filmmaking, uses landscape portrayals, poetry, interviews and acting, and in doing so creates a very unique cinematic language. Don’t miss it!
At 10pm, we’ll have a screening of I AM NOT A WITCH – Rungano Nyoni’s singular, strange Zambian witch-hunt fairy tale. Here’s a quote by Nyoni from an interview for MUBI Notebook: »I wanted to make it a fairy tale because I found a really good Zambian way of saying the story, without making it about Zambia. I grew up on fairy tales. I’ve always wanted to do this, actually. In a way, I was trying to get away—perhaps as a first-time filmmaker this is a bit of a cliché—I was trying to get away from ›the arc.‹ It’s always ›the arc, arc, arc arc,‹ and I was trying to do something different. I was trying to do something that I grew up with, which is that my family used to tell me fairy tales and they were really particular. Fairy tales in general are very strange, but Zambian ones mix genres. They’re for kids, but they’re really violent, and they’re funny, and they mix magic realism. All of these things I wanted to take for my film. They are really musical. I was trying to do that.«
Make sure to be on time for both films as the seats at Luru Kino are quite limited. / Da die Plätze im Luru Kino recht begrenzt sind, empfiehlt es sich heute besonders pünktlich zu sein.
| Thu 12 April 2018 Luru Kino | |
| 8 PM | HOW TO RESIST… METEORLAR / METEORS (NL/TR 2017) D: Gürcan Keltek 98’ OV w/ English subtitles [German Premiere] |
| 10 PM | JUNG & FRISCH I AM NOT A WITCH (GB/F/D 2017) D: Rungano Nyoni 98’ OV w/ English subtitles |
Germany Premiere
METEORLAR / METEORS
NL/TR 2017, Dok., Director: Gürcan Keltek, OmeU/OV with English subtitles, 84’, DCP
Shadows, specters, stones and snow blend into each other. Hunters are fixing a flock of ibexes from a dis-tance. Grainy, flickering images, a circular aperture. Just like the beginnings of cinema. Coming from a world in between. Then the hor-rors of war, jet fighters, explosions, bullet holes. In the streets: anger and resistance. Finally, the camera tracks writer and actress Ebru Ojen Şahin, whose lines accompa-ny the elegiac black and white. A holy mountain, religious statues, a solar eclipse, meteor showers. A film that works with documentary and fictional fragments, that picturizes claustrophobically and celestially by turns, that is charged with symbolism and political topicality, all of it consistently highly remark-able. METEORS wants to break the silence, create counter images, and testify. In its poeticized style, it merges natural mysticism with an outcry against state oppression, mountainous regions of Southeastern Anatolia with the urban landscapes of besieged towns. How shall one remember what must not ever have taken place?
I AM NOT A WITCH
GB/F/D 2017, Director: Rungano Nyoni, Actors: Margaret Mulubwa, Henri BJ. Phiri, Nancy Mulilo, 98’, OmeU/ OV with English subtitles, DCP
The fact that Shula does not have any magic powers but is a hardly ten year-old child on her own, becomes clear to everybody immediately at the beginning. Nevertheless, she is nearby when a woman tumbles while getting water. Absurd! But reason enough for a Zambian village commune to accuse her of witchcraft. The verdict is delivered fast and silent Shula is brought to a witch camp where she is displayed as an attraction for westeners shooting selfies. However, from the elder witches, she receives protection and a community spirit. After the government official Mr. Band de-clares: “You are my little witch now”, a grotesque course starts to evolve. In I AM NOT A WITCH, Rungano Nyoni deals with topics of misogyny and superstition, but also the presence or absence of female empowerment as well as the solidarity among the oppressed. Narratively, the film oscillates between blackly humorous satire, fairy tale and feminist and global criticism precisely boiled down to an essence.
