Germany | 2010 | col | 119 mins | dir. Feo Aladag, with Sibel Kekilli, Nizam Schiller, Derya Alabora | cert. tbc | in German with English subtitles | preview screening
What would you sacrifice for your family’s love? Your values? Your freedom? Your life? German-born Umay flees from her oppressive marriage in Istanbul, taking her young son Cem with her. She hopes to find a better life with her family in Berlin, but her unexpected arrival creates intense conflict. Her family is trapped in their conventions. They are torn between their love for her and the traditional values of their community. Ultimately, they decide to return Cem to his father in Turkey. To keep her son, Umay is forced to move again. She finds the inner strength to build a new life for herself and Cem, but her need for her family’s love drives her to a series of ill-fated attempts at reconciliation. What Umay doesn’t realize is just how deep the wounds are and how dangerous her struggle for self-determination has become…
Followed by Q&A with the director Feo Aladag.
The film screening takes place in conjunction with the conference
The Diasporic Family in Cinema
The diasporic family assumes a prominent place in cinematic narratives about the dynamics of postmodern multiculturalism and transnational mobility. Displacement and dispersal, the rupture of cultural and familial ties, language barriers, social exclusion, racism and negotiations of the multi-layered politics of belonging in the host and home countries are frequently shown to lead to a destabilisation of family structures and identities. Conversely, however, many films also foreground the benefits of non-Western family values and kinship networks and thereby offer a critique of the Western cult of the individual and the alleged superiority of the hegemonic white family.
The conference seeks to explore the representation of this particular type of family in Hollywood, Bollywood and contemporary European cinema. It will also provide a platform for dialogue with filmmakers and producers who engage with issues of cultural diversity. It aims to explore how media practitioners negotiate between their artistic ambitions, the demands of the public funding bodies and the market in their construction of diasporic family life on screen and how these films intervene with ongoing media debates about hegemonic and minority cultures in Western societies.
The conference is co-hosted by the Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, the Centres for Film and Media Studies and for Migration and Diaspora Studies, SOAS, in association with the Screen Studies Group, University of London, and the Goethe Institute. Conference and film screening are supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain.
For the conference programme and speakers please see:
http://www.farflungfamilies.net/events/item/the_diasporic_family_in_cinema
Conference registration is required in advance.
http://www.soas.ac.uk/centresoffice/events/
