CINEMA+CONTEXT

BIHAR (Kurdish: SPRING) is the first in the four-part feature film series FOUR BALLADS FOR MY FATHER by Cemile Sahin. The film captures the life of the Bingöl family who were displaced from Northern Kurdistan by the GAP dam project. After the father, Hasan, is wrongly summoned and disappears into police custody, his family is forced into exile in Paris years later. Daughter Dicle, criminalized by the Turkish state and imprisoned in Istanbul, is eventually released but not allowed to leave the country. She must live apart from her mother Leyla, her brother Firat and her uncle Kazim.

Police violence as everyday, state-led terror. Water as a weapon of war. Forced resettlement as an instrument of authoritarian power. As the family sets out to find Hasan, the entanglement of their own story with the history of exploitation and repression of an entire region becomes increasingly palpable.

 

CINEMA+CONTEXT is curated by Tara Afsah, Lilian Pfeuffer and Raquel Kishori Dukpa. The focus is on films and their contextualisation from a decolonial and intersectional feminist perspective.

Tara Afsah was born in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1990. She studied at the University of the Arts with a focus on media theory, film and audiovisual communication. She works as a filmmaker, is part of the story development department at Komplizen Film and does live camera and video for theatre productions, including at Ballhaus Ost, Kosmos Theater in Vienna, Festspiele am Plötzensee and Schauspielhaus Graz. In March 2020, together with Lilian Pfeuffer, she founded the event series CINEMA+CONTEXT, which takes place regularly at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Since September 2020, Tara has been working at Komplizen Film in story development for cinema and series.

Lilian Pfeuffer was born in Berlin in 1989. She has worked freelance for various film production and distribution companies as well as for the association „Pro Quote Film“. She gained festival experience at the Berlinale as well as at the Max Ophüls Preis, where she chaired the film festival’s co-production meeting in 2017 and 2018 and curated themed panels as part of the industry programme MOP-Industry. In early 2020, she co-founded the CINEMA+CONTEXT event series with Tara Afsah. Lilian has also been working part-time for film press agency Media Office since 2019, as well as doing freelance target group work for feature films (e.g. FUTUR DREI) for theatrical release.

Raquel Kishori Dukpa grew up in Berlin-Kreuzberg. She studied in Hildesheim with a focus on film, queer feminist theory and popular culture. She has been part of JÜNGLINGE since 2016 and participated as casting director, in the production, as well as in the research of their joint debut film Futur Drei. She is the editor of the catalogue I See You – Gedanken zum Film Futur Drei (published by edition assemblage) and was the author of the sixth season of the youth series Druck (ZDF/ funk). Based on Nancy Wang Yuen’s reflections on typecasting, she deals with structures that evoke typecasting.