FLANOIRIE

In this lecture and speculative film program, Karina Griffith presents her existing and emerging research into German film archives and Black German films. Her project, On All Fronts, was part of the re-selected program at the 2022 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. It intervened in the film program, Confrontation of Cultures, which took place in Oberhausen in 1993 as an attempt at a postcolonial change of discourse in a reunified Germany, but didn’t invite Black positions from Germany. In her new artistic research project, she engages with the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek’s (today: Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art) 1982 film catalog, Ausländer unter uns, to pose similar questions about the politics of citation to present Black perspectives that could have been.

“The catalog is intended as a practical aid for all those who are concerned in one way or another with the ‘problematic of foreigners’ and who wish to use films to impart knowledge. As a first compilation, it needs to be improved, supplemented and updated. We would therefore be grateful for any suggestions and criticism.”
quoted from: Schoenberner, Gerhard und Seifried, Ursula: Ausländer unter uns. Ein Filmkatalog. Der Senator für Arbeit und Betriebe und Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek e.V., Berlin 1982. pg. 7

Film program:
Jagdpartie (Hunting Party) Ibrahim Shaddad GDR 1964 35 mm OVEnS 41 Min.
Cultural Nationalism Skip Norman West Germany 1968 DCP en OV 11 Min.

https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/cinema/film-screening/unter-uns-speculative-film-archives-2168/