Video Presentation: “Stations of Turkish-German Migration in Film”

Speaker: Martina Priessner
Date: December 19, 2012
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Dolapdere Campus, Cinema Hall

This video presentation is organized by İstanbul Bilgi University Center for Migration Research in cooperation with Goethe-Institut Istanbul.

In the early-1970s, the labor migration from Turkey to Germany has become a theme of the art of cinema in both countries. The stories told were mainly marked with the clichés of foreigner in Germany and Almancı (German Turk) in Turkey. With the 1990s, however, the new young generation of film-makers with Turkey-origin in Germany has started to tell the stories from a different perspective. These young film-makers, who did not experience migration personally, transfer their reserved point of view with a brand new style to cinema. These new works of cinema challenge the rooted pictures, describe the subjects of migration beyond the role of victims and at some points have a strong, new poetic aesthetic.

The video presentation, that Martina Priessner produced in collaboration with Tunçay Kulaoğlu, focus on different dimensions of this change. Based on the themes of left country, being on the roads, arriving in a new country and going back home, the presentation tells about the reflections and perceptions of the concept of Almancı in cinema in a visual historical journey with sequences from the films shot in the last 30 years.

Event language is English. Consecutive translation into Turkish will be available.
Contact: migcentre@bilgi.edu.tr / 0212 311 53 50

Martina Priessner:
Martina Priessner finished her studies in Cultural and Social Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2003. For more than 10 years she worked as a radio journalist. In 2003, she co-founded the transcultural network Kultursprünge and organised the film festival and symposium “Europe in Motion: Moving Images, Shifting Perspectives in Transcultural Cinema” (Berlin 2004). Between 2003– 2007 she worked as editor and curator for the Film Festival Turkey/Germany. For Ballhaus Naunynstrasse she worked as a dramaturge and curator between 2008–2010. Together with Tunçay Kulaoğlu she wrote and directed the short films “The Shave” (2006) and “The six days of Adam and Eva” (2008). “Wir sitzen im Süden/Based down South” is her first long documentary. In 2011, she received a grant by the Nipkow-Programme for her new project “A Road named Desire”.