Following the launch of the film and discourse festival at the Goethe-Institut in Tashkent at the end of September, the second part will start in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA. The starting point for Destination: Tashkent is the concept and history of the Tashkent Festival for Asian, African and Latin American Cinema, which welcomed filmmakers from a wide range of nations to Uzbekistan between 1968 and 1988. The festival was not only a showcase for the cinema of the Soviet Union and the so-called non-aligned states, but also a place of conviviality and a meeting place for critical exchange.
Image above: Filmstill aus Tashkent 58-88 von Zumrad Mirzalieva.
With the screening of historically relevant films, Destination: Tashkent revives the spirit of the original festival in Berlin. Its role as a platform for transnational dialogue will be explored anew from a current perspective and with a discursive accompanying program. In addition, two short film series with works by contemporary filmmakers from Central Asia and a Berlin-based diaspora will build a bridge to the present.
To accompany the festival, the Destination: TashkentReader will be published with texts and conversations, archive finds and the results of on-site research. The reader will be presented on December 1 at HKW as part of the festival.
Programme
Wed., 27.11.2024
7 pm
Opening
Greetings from Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (HKW), Johannes Ebert (Goethe-Institut), and Maren Niemeyer (Goethe-Institut Uzbekistan), Can Sungu (HKW)
Miriam Makeba Auditorium (HKW)
Free admission
7:30 pm
Film: Emitaï (Gott des Donners)
D: Ousmane Sembène, 1971, Senegal, 103′, Wolof, Diola,
French with English subtitles, with live translation into German
During the Second World War, the Vichy regime recruits men from the French colonies. The resistance in a Diola village in Senegal develops into an uprising under the merciless pressure of colonial rule and ends in tragedy. Ousmane Sembène’s cinematic narrative follows the gradual escalation of the conflict with a focus on the villagers. However, it does not draw its dramatic strength from the fates of the individual protagonists, but from the fatal clash between the village’s established order of life and the ignorance, disrespect and aggression of the ‘white’ colonialists. Just as the village elder directs his hope not to Emitaï, the god of change, but to the uprising, Sembène directs his hope to the young generation.
With an introduction by Aboubakar Sanogo
Miriam Makeba Auditorium (HKW)
Free admission
9:30 pm
DJ-Set
Magnus Hirschfeld Bar (HKW)
Free admission
Thu., 28.11.2024
11 am – 1:30 pm
City Tour (In English): Transnational Spaces of Film Culture in Berlin (Wedding)
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
Admission free
Meeting point: SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
3 pm
Film: Les Ambassadeurs
D: Naceur Ktari, 1976, France, Tunisia, Arabic
and French with English subtitles
Scenes from the everyday lives and confused fates of various residents of the Goutte d’Or neighborhood in Paris, who struggle with unemployment, contempt, indifference and racism. In response to the racist murder of a teenager in the neighborhood, Ktari wanted to make a film with mass appeal to spark a debate. The film’s broadcast on French television in 1977 provoked many reactions – both solidary and racist. Les Ambassadeurs won the Tanit d’Or at the Carthage Film Festival in 1976 and was shown at the Tashkent Film Festival in 1976.
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
€7 (tickets from 21.11.)
5:30 pm
Welcome (In English)
Can Sungu (HKW), Maren Niemeyer (Goethe-Institut Tashkent)
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
Free admission
6 pm
Keynote (In English): The Spirit of Tashkent
Masha Salazkina
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
Free admission
6:45 pm
Short film: Tashkent 58-88
D: Zumrad Mirzalieva (DAVRA), 2024, Uzbekistan, 10′,
Russian with English subtitles
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
Free admission
8 pm
Film: Bakajdyn Zhajyty (Bakaj’s Weide)
D: Tolomush Okeev, 1966, USSR / Kyrgyz SSR, 78′, Kyrgyz with English subtitles
With an introduction by Sultan Usuvaliev
Together with the other children, Kalyk arrives at his home camp on a mountain pasture to spend the summer vacation with his parents. His father Bakaj, the elder of the camp, decides not to send Kalyk back to boarding school so that the boy can support him and his mother in their older years. After a family conflict explodes into violence, the boy gets his way and leaves his parents to spend another school year in the city. The majestically beautiful Kyrgyz mountain pastures, captured seemingly effortlessly in black and white Cinemascope, become the setting for a collision between tradition and progress, with the young generation’s will to emancipation at the center. Tolomush Okeev’s timeless masterpiece, emotionally moving and philosophically attuned.
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
€7 (tickets from 21.11.)
Fri., 29.11.2024
2 pm
Film: Maa Bhoomi (Unser Land)
D: Goutam Ghose, 1979, India, 158′, Telugu with English subtitles
The film takes up the story of the Telangana Rebellion, which escalated in the Indian princely state of Hyderabad between 1944 and 1946. At the center of this epic film adaptation of Krishan Chander’s novella is the landless farmer Ramayya, who refuses to come to terms with the prevailing conditions. Ramayya goes all the way from illiterate and starving day laborer to communist agitator and guerrilla fighter. Goutam Ghose’s reappraisal of this chapter of Indian history was directly linked to the social grievances in India and specifically to the famine of 1974, which was similar in scale to that of 1943 in Hyderabad.
With introduction and subsequent film discussion with the director
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
€7 (tickets from 21.11.)
5:30 pm
Short film: Tashkent 58-88
D: Zumrad Mirzalieva (DAVRA), 2024, Uzbekistan, 10′,
Russian with English subtitles
Welcome: Can Sungu (HKW)
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Free admission
6 pm
Panel discussion: “Contact Zones” of Cinematic Internationalism
With Masha Salazkina, Manishita Dass, Aboubakar
Sanogo, Moderation: Sophie Genske
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Free admission
8 pm
Film: West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty
D: Med Hondo, 1979, France, Algeria, Mauritania, 115′, French with German subtitles, live translation into English
With an introduction by Aboubakar Sanogo
In an abandoned factory, a stage set was erected in the form of a mock-up of a slave ship with “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” emblazoned on its upper deck. This symbolic ship serves as a complex multi-purpose stage on which important historical events related to French colonialism in the Caribbean are presented, with a particular focus on the connections between the West Indies and France. The ship itself is a microcosm of colonialism, illustrating its hierarchies, inequalities and inner turmoil. From government meetings to street protests, from the slave trade to labor migration, numerous themes are brought to life through dramatic forms inspired by the revue and Brecht, complemented by dance and music.
Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty is one of the first of its kind in Africa and was funded at the time with an unprecedented budget for an African production. Almost half a century after its release, it remains a unique masterpiece and a milestone in African cinema.
Miriam Makeba Auditorium (HKW)
€7/5 (tickets from 21.11.)
Sat., 30.11.2024
1 pm
Film: Interview
D: Mrinal Sen, 1971, India, 101′, Bengali with English subtitles and live translation into German
A family friend has promised Ranjit a lucrative job in a British company. As a formality, the young man has to attend the interview in a European suit. The master of Indian cinema Mrinal Sen tells Ranjit’s search for an untraceable suit as an allegory of post-colonial India with its internalized devaluation of its own way of life, its fetishization of the British colonial heritage and the precarious circumstances of the majority of the population.
A precise and moving portrait of Kolkata’s middle class in the 1970s, which testifies to the director’s deep attachment to his homeland and its people. Interview is an inspiring move against conventional film language with a witty breaking of the fourth wall.
With an introduction by Manishita Dass
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
€7/5 (tickets from 21.11.)
3:30 pm
Keynote (In English with translation into German)
Translation Practices at Tashkent Film Festival
Elena Razlogova
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Free admission
4:30 pm
Panel Discussion (In English with translation into German)
Live Translations as Global Practice
With May Adadol Ingawanij, Jesse Gerard Mpango,
Iuliia Glushneva, Moderation: Elena Razlogova
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Free admission
6:15 pm
Lecture-Performance: Hung Tongue by Slavs and Tatars
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Admission free
8:30 pm
Film: Gelin (Schwiegertochter)
D: Khodzha Kuli Narliyev, 1972, USSR, Turkmen SSR, 81′
Young Ogulkeyik lives with her old father-in-law in the desert and waits eagerly for her husband, who has gone off to war. When the war ends and it becomes clear that her husband is missing, she does not give up hope of his return and stays with her father-in-law, even if it means never marrying again. The never-ending daily tasks that Ogulkeyik carries out with precise, never hasty movements are accompanied by her daydreams, in which she is always happily united with her husband. Gelin is a milestone in Turkmen cinema and a detailed cinematic reconstruction of the material culture of Turkmen pastoral nomads and a hymn to love.
Russian with German subtitles and live translation into English
With an introduction by Azem Bekturova
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
€7/5 (tickets from 21.11.)
10:30 pm
Raqs Raqs Shanba Party
Tunes and beats from Asia, Africa and Latin America!
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Lindower Str. 20/22, 13347 Berlin
€5; free admission for accredited guests
Sun., 1.12.2024
1 pm
Conversation, book presentation: Destination: Tashkent
Aykan Safoğlu, Valeriya Kim, Elyor Nemat in conversation with Eric Otieno Sumba
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Free admission
2:15 pm
Short film series: Visions of Intersectionality
With an introduction by Can Sungu and a subsequent
Film talk with Aykan Safoğlu and Zara Zandieh
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Duration: 72′
€7/5 (tickets from 21.11.)
4 pm
Panel Discussion (In English)
Encounters for and around films – space for film and discourse
Discourse Berlin/ Tashkent/ Almaty
Malika Mukhamejan (Qyzqaras) , Valeriya Kim (Cinema Love),
Dieu Hao Do (BAFNET), Saltanat Shoshanova, Moderation: Can Sungu
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Admission free
5:45 pm
Short film series
Winds of Change: Women’s Stories from Central Asia
With an introduction by Valeriya Kim and Malika
Mukhamejan (in English)
Safi Faye Hall (HKW)
Duration: 78′
€7/5 (tickets from 21.11.)
WHEN?
Wednesday, 27. November until Sunday, 1. December 2024
WHERE?
Sinema Transtopia
Lindower Str. 20/22
13347 Berlin
or
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
COSTS?
Accreditation (until 18.11.): Regular: 30 EUR, Reduced: 15 EUR
Accreditation allows free admission to all festival films at HKW and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA and entitles the holder to book one free ticket for all festival events as long as tickets are available.
Individual tickets: Regular: 7 EUR, Reduced: 5 EUR
