Film Screening and Reading HAVARIE – The Mediterranean as Political Space

Mon, 22.05.2017

6:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Goethe-Institut London

Reading / Filmscreening / Conversation with author Merle Kröger, filmmaker Philip Scheffner and architect & researcher Lorenzo Pezzani. Chaired by Nicole Wolf

‘Havarie’ – a German word originally derived from Arabic means accident, damage or disaster, normally in the maritime context. It has provided the title for a book and a film which both take the same incident in the Mediterranean as point of departure. They offer different perspectives on this blue stretch of water that has become a crowded transit zone for tourists, for maritime crews, but also for the thousands of refugees that try to get to Europe each year.

How do book and film use the joined research differently? What different aesthetic choices do literature and film provide when dealing with issues such as Europe’s relation to refugees and migrants, the Mediterranean as a political space or inequality in the context of globalised work? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during the course of the evening.

Programm

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This event is part of ‘Crossings’, an ICA-led UK-wide season in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and made possible with support from the BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery.

Foto: Merle Kröger © Ralf Sudbrak Merle Kröger (born 1967 in Plön) is a producer, screen and fiction writer based in Berlin. Havarie is her forth novel after Cut! (2003), Kyai! (2007) and Grenzfall (2012). She is also a lecturer for the „Professional Media Master Class for Documentary film“ in Halle, Germany.

Foto: Philip Scheffner © pong film gmbh Philip Scheffner (born 1966 in Homburg/Saar) is an artist and filmmaker living in Berlin. Together with Merle Kröger he manages the production company pong, which has produced his own films The Halfmoon Files (2007), The Day of the Sparrow (Der Tage des Spatzen, 2010), And-Ek Ghes (2016 with Colorado Velcu) and Havarie, but also films by other directors.
Kröger and Scheffner often prepare their projects by doing their research together, for example with the novel Grenzfall (‘Border Incident’) and the film Revision.

© angefragt Lorenzo Pezzani is Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he leads the Forensic Architecture MA studio. His work deals with the spatial politics and visual cultures of migration, with a particular focus on the geography of the ocean. Since 2011, he has been working on Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project that critically investigates the militarised border regime in the Mediterranean Sea. Together with a wide network of NGOs, scientists, journalists and activist groups, he has produced maps, visualisations and human right reports that attempt to document the violence perpetrated against migrants at sea and challenge the regime of visibility imposed by surveillance means on this contested area.

Nicole Wolf is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her wide range of interests merge in thinking, writing, teaching and curating with political cinemas as modes of critical and productive relations. Anthropology, film studies, political science and postcolonial theory informed her academically and her extensive and continuing research in South Asia shaped her conceptual and activist queries towards documentary mode and experimental filmmaking. Wolf is invested in exploring new forms of writing and making research public, she prefers working collaboratively and is involved in permaculture projects internationally.

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