ZMO News

Wednesday, 5 December, 2018

Wednesday, 12 December, bi'bak, Prinzenallee 59, 13359 Berlin
Pembe Hayat KuirFest: A Queer Film Festival from Ankara to Berlin
Film screening and discussion with Selim Özadar (bi'bak) & Esra Özban (Pink Life KuirFest) as part of the ZMO Colloquium Performing Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia

Pembe Hayat KuirFest (Pink Life Queer Festival) is the only queer film festival in Turkey. The festival has started in Ankara in 2011 and has expanded ever since, having screenings in five other cities in Turkey. Pink Life KuirFest has also collaborated with many organizations and festivals abroad. In June and July 2018, Esra Özban has prepared a six-week film screening program dedi - cated to queer perspectives on migration, in collaboration with bi’bak Berlin. This event at the ZMO will feature a selection of short queer movies from Tur - key curated by Pink Life KuirFest, which intends to open up a debate on the changing landscape of queer cinema and LGBTI+ movement in Turkey...

Events

Thursday, 6 December, Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien (ZOiS), Möhrenstr. 60, 10117 Berlin
Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas. Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus
Book launch with ZMO fellow Katrin Bromber

‘Translocality’ has become an important concept in social sciences for depicting the social and cultural representations of a globalizing world ‘from the ground’. But does the concept also have the capacity to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link people, institutions, and goods in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East?

Mobilities, Boundaries and Travelling Ideas seeks to explore this question. Collecting anthropological, historical and sociological case studies, the edited volume aims to overcome ‘territorial containers’ such as the nation‐state or local community, which have long dominated research on mobility and migration in Central Asia and the Caucasus...

Monday, 17 December, ZMO
The Jewish Neighborhood in Sanʿāʾ and the Relationship between Jews and Muslims: Physical Separation and Cultural Closeness
Lecture by Menashe Anzi (Ben Gurion University, Beersheba) as part of the Urban Studies Seminar The Urban Spatialities of Religion in the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia

Qāʿ al-Yahūd , the Jewish neighborhood of Ṣanʿāʾ , was established at the end of the seventeenth century after the Ṣanʿāʾni Jews were expelled from the old city. To many scholars, physical separation in Ṣanʿāʾ was a symbol of the marginalization of the Jews in the city. In his lecture, Menashe Anzi will suggest that the physical separation made it possible to preserve autonomy and at the same time allowed the community to remain involved in the life of the city. Physical separation between the neighborhoods allowed for the neutralization of the collective separation, and created common behavior among Muslims and Jews. The behaviors reflected and formed urban consciousness. The Ṣanʿāʾnis tried to shape an ideal image of learned, knowledgeable, well-dressed, aristocratic, refined individuals. In the second part of the lecture, Anzi will present two examples of relations between the two groups behind the walls. In one case, an argument erupted between a rabbi and a Muslim merchant in the Jewish watch shop, which led to the rabbi’s imprisonment and a deep discussion on the text of Lot’s character as presented in...

18-19 December, Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Str. 2, 10785 Berlin
LA BATAILLE D’ALGER – A Film in History
Film screenings and a Q&A session with ZMO fellow Nora Lafi and Malek Bensmaïl

LA BATTAGLIA DI ALGERI (Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria/Italy 1966, 18.12.) tells the story of the 1957 military and political clashes between the French paratroopers under General Massu and the networks of the Algerian independent front FLN. The film is based on the book by prominent FLN leader Yacef Saadi about the battle for Algiers, which was published in 1962. While Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo started shooting his film on June 19th, 1965, three years after independence, colonel Houari Boumédiène toppled President Ahmed Ben Bella. Several months later, the film, which was shot in the black and white of Italian neorealismo, hit the Venice Film Festival like a bomb and was awarded the Golden Lion. The French delegation left the award ceremony as a protest. The film remained banned in France until 1971...

Tenders & Calls

Position as Student Assistant
Closing Date: 15 December 2018

Free post for student assistant to support the research group "Progress: Ideas, Agents, Symbols". More information on the focus and research agenda of the groups can be found here.

Call for Abstracts: Lost and gained on the way: Placing “Transit” migration in Europe, Africa and Asia (13-14 May 2019)
Workshop, Closing Date: 15 January 2019

Within the national order of things, as Liisa Malkki aptly named more than two decades ago, certain places are marked only as transit points for certain groups of people. Within their borders, it is not possible for categorically unwanted newcomers to esta blish stabile lives and secure residence. Within the migration literature and policy documents they are defined as places where migrants spend only a limited time on their way to their desired destination, to which hopes for a better future are attached. However, as much as the term transit/transitory connotes being on the move and in-between places, these transit places (cities, countries, detention centres, refugee camps) often turn into the exact opposite, where feelings of being stuck prevail...

Prizes and Awards

DRS Award for Excellent Supervision for ZMO director Ulrike Freitag

ZMO Director Ulrike Freitag was awarded the DRS Award for Excellent Supervision 2018 by the Dahlem Research School in appreciation of her outstanding engagement in the supervision and mentoring of doctoral students. The annual honouring rewards two supervisors from the Freie Universität for the exceptional quality of their work. The award sum is 2,000 Euros, which are earmarked for the specific purpose of further supporting junior researchers. Congratulations!

Knowledge Transfer

René Wildangel: Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht: Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus
ZMO Studien 24, jetzt online frei abrufbar

Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht bewegte sich in Palästina die arabische Wahrnehmung des Nationalsozialismus. Dennoch steht allein der ‚Großmufti von Jerusalem’ Amïn al-Husainï im Zentrum der historischen Wahrnehmung. Seine bedingungslose Kollaboration mit den Nazis dient bis heute als Sinnbild kollektiver arabischer Begeisterung für Hitler. Erstmals fragt die vorliegende Studie differenzierter nach zeitgenössischen arabischen Perspektiven in Palästina und schließt dabei auch Kritik und Vorbehalte gegen NS-Deutschland und den italienischen Faschismus ein. Der rassistisch begründete Antisemitismus der Nazis war den Arabern in Palästina fremd, auch wenn sich die arabische Nationalbewegung im Kampf gegen britische Mandatsmacht und jüdische Einwanderer zunehmend radikalisierte...

Born of Fire: A film by Jamil Dehlavi
ZMO fellow Ali Nobil Ahmad contributed essays to a booklet accompanying this limited edition of "Born of Fire" by Pakistan's most intriguing filmmaker Jamil Dehlavi

Following the mysterious death of his beloved father, classical musician Paul Bergson (Peter Firth, Equus, Tess, TV’s Spooks) is haunted by visions and nightmares. With his lover (Suzan Crowley, The Devil Inside), he travels to remote Turkey on a quest to find The Master Musician, only to encounter a creature of unimaginable evil. Steeped in mysticism and music, and mixing the avant-garde with supernatural fantasy, stunning visuals and a terrific score by Colin Towns, Born of Fire is a bold and poetic horror film from one of international cinema’s great maverick talents...