FILM PROGRAM I
From the film collection of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin, program curated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (GER)
Whaled Women | Ewa Einhorn/Jeuno Je Kim
SWEDEN 2012, 9 min (Swedish with English subtitles)
Schlop-Schlop and KK are two annoying women who work at the Office Of Development in Krabstadt. Krabstadt is a fictional frontier town in the Arctic where all the Nordic countries have sent their “Unwanteds”. It’s populated by the long-term unemployed, asylum seekers, immigrants, and those with too many over¬due bills. One day a group of Whaled Women are stranded on Krabstadt’s shores and it’s up to KK and SS to deal with the situation.
Wa Wailah / Oh Torment | Monira Al Qadiri
KUWAIT 2008, 10 min (Arabic with English subtitles)
A series of repetitive choreographies are set to Abdul Wahab Al Rashid’s woeful folk song of love and lament. Complete with over-the-top costumes, props and make-up, OH TORMENT is lodged somewhere between a Shakespearean play and an MTV music video as rich and colorful contemporary visuals are mixed with traditional attire. Al Qadiri scrutinizes gender roles and conventions (be they social, musical or cinematic) by switching the roles of the sexes: thus the filmmaker herself plays the role of the male singer, while all of the female dancers are played by cross-dressing men.
Serious Ladies | Susanne Sachsse
GERMANY 2013, 21 min (German/English)
Because this ideal of an attractive but not whorish white woman, in a good marriage but not self-effacing, with a nice job but not so successful she outshines her man, slim but not neurotic over food, forever young without being disfigured by the surgeon’s knife, a radiant mother not overwhelmed by nappies and homework, who manages her home beautifully without becoming a slave to housework, who knows a thing or two but less than a man, this happy white woman who is constantly shoved under our noses, this woman we are all supposed hard to resemble – never mind that she seems to be running herself ragged for not much reward – I for one have never met her, not anywhere. My hunch is that she doesn’t exist. (V. Despentes, “King Kong Theory") Serious Ladies is originally conceived as a Video Installation, but it is also available to be screened in a cinema situation.
The Craft | Monira Al Qadiri
KUWAIT 2017, 16 min (Arabic with English subtitles)
In The Craft, Al Qadiri turns to memories of her childhood in Kuwait to tell an unlikely story. Were her diplomat parents really conspiring with aliens who flew around in a spaceship that looked like an American diner? A sense of paranoia seeps through cleverly edited VHS home movies superimposed drawings of the aliens. Al Qadiri's questioning of reality leads us to question geopolitics, diplomacy, war and peace.
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