Über Namen (About Names)
Every person is registered in the world in a combination of words and sounds. The name acts as a matter of course, but in its meaning it appears both omnipresent and infinitely changeable. Names indicate affiliation and origin. Names are also part of a civil contract between a population and a state. In 1984 in socialist Bulgaria, all Turkish minority representatives were forced to “bulgarize” their names. The narration and presentation about the other groups of people plays a major role in triggering such processes and then justifying them. Today the retired sculptures of socialist functionaries rest in a sculpture park. Over time, the engraved names on the gravestones in cemeteries become illegible. The gaps in the story are getting bigger. The story is implied, and so is the impossibility of fully understanding.
Speechless Memory
Kyriaki, descendant of Slavophones of Macedonia in Greece , describes, through family stories and personal experience, the reasons behind her identity quest. Speaking two languages, feeling different emotions about each one , she goes through the family – album pages, allowing us a glimpse at the history of her land.
Hantush - a fairytale
When Israeli bulldozers arrived at her Bedouin village to demolish her home, 14-year-old Palestine refugee girl Salha called on her flying lamb Hantush to take her somewhere far away…
Swimming Lesson
A mockumentary film in which I teach Bedouin girls to swim in a waterless “pool”. It aims to stimulate thought about the lack of swimming pools accessible to Bedouins in Israel, actually denying them swimming lessons and causing frequent cases of drowning. There are over 200,000 Arab-Bedouins living in the Negev region of Israel today, with access to one single swimming pool that was inaugurated in the town of Rahat in 2017. Bedouins are not allowed to enter swimming pools in Jewish localities.
Letter to Shaheen Bagh
The film explores the Shaheen Bagh movement, a women’s-led protest in India against the new citizenship laws, and how it has forged solidarities across the globe. The movement evokes hope in dark fascist times and gave impetus to many similar protests across India, mostly led by Muslim women.
Until When?
“Until When?” portrays a group of singers from Tumaco (Colombia) who are looking for their disappeared relatives, but face a complex crossroads: the negligence of the government that is not a guarantor of Human Rights, the violence in the territories, death threats, the Impunity for the crime of forced disappearance, and delays in the search, 5 years after the signature of the Peace Agreement.
Breaches
Can it happen that an entire population is denied its identity and the mere fact of being able to speak its own language, preserve its own culture, and producing art becomes an act of resistance?It happens in Kurdistan, a place that has been tortured for centuries, inhabited by persecuted and subjugated people, but who have never completely bowed to their oppressors and have fought hard for their freedom.
A Defense
In 2015, hundreds of academics signed a petition in Turkey, asking the state to put an end to violence inflicted upon Kurdish people. Academics for Peace have been criminalized and put on trial with the charge of terrorist propaganda. A Defense portrays one of the Academics for Peace while preparing for her upcoming appearance in court in 2019. A psychodrama is put on stage in a house, where the person is both the state, the judge, the academic and the cook. It’s a self-portrait on the violence and absurdity of the ways in which the state sneaks into the house of an academic, forcing her to adjust her words, body and gestures.
