"For some filmmakers, too much time has passed"

Cristina Nord: This is the third edition of "Fiktionsbescheinigung". Is there a particular focus this time around?

Jacqueline Nsiah: When we started carrying out our research, there wasn’t, but now that the programme has been put together, certain central themes can be seen. For example, films made in East Germany, films by female directors of colour. 

Cristina Nord: You mean OYOYO by Chetna Vora and EIN HERBST IM LÄNDCHEN BÄRWALDE by Gautam Bora?

Jacqueline Nsiah: That’s right. Chetna Vora and Gautam Bora came from India and studied film in Babelsberg in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Another focus is formed by the films made by the first and second generation of Turkish immigrants who came to Germany, the “Gastarbeiter” or “guest workers”.

Can Sungu: We concentrated on films from archives, films from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. They hadn’t been frequently screened, for different reasons in each case. 

“You notice that a female director of color has an entirely different perspective on this life compared to the official narratives of East Germany.” (Can Sungu)

Cristina Nord: The two films from East Germany that you mentioned, Jacqueline, are really something special. What made you decide to include both of them in the programme?

Jacqueline Nsiah: What impressed me about EIN HERBST IM LÄNDCHEN BÄRWALDE is how an Indian student came to Germany and acted like an ethnographer, such a refreshing inversion and so ahead of its time. 

Can Sungu: I think OYOYO is such a strong film because Chetna Vora succeeds in creating a microcosm of the life of foreign students in East Germany. The film is set entirely in interior spaces, in a hall of residence. German serves as a lingua franca. People are in constant interaction, dance and music play a big role. You notice that a female director of color has an entirely different perspective on this life compared to the official narratives of East Germany.

Cristina Nord: The theme of the party is interesting. Several films from this year’s programme bring celebration to the fore, isn’t that right?

Jacqueline Nsiah: Yes, very much so, as a celebration of life.

Can Sungu: AUFENTHALTSERLAUBNIS by Antonio Skármeta comes to mind here, which has some similarities to OYOYO, even though it’s not from an East German perspective, as it’s set in West Berlin. And it doesn’t take place in interior spaces either, but rather outside, in the Tiergarten, in front of Bellevue Palace. Very different communities come together there – all of whom have experienced exile. I think OYOYO and AUFENTHALTSERLAUBNIS enter into a dialogue with one another.

Cristina Nord: Both this edition of Fiktionsbescheinigung and the previous ones include many films by people of color who studied at the dffb, such as Raoul Peck, Idrissou Mora Kpai, Tsitsi Dangaremba and Sema Poyraz. How would you bring these films into connection with those made in Babelsberg before the Wall came down?

Jacqueline Nsiah: To start with, I was surprised to see that there were so many film students of color in Babelsberg. That was a sort of epiphany for me.

Can Sungu: The films from Babelsberg contain an ideological imprint to a certain extent. I don’t think that people were obliged to reflect a particular socialist ideology in their films, but the idea of socialist internationalism does play a role. And OLINGO by Emile Itolo is about racism, for example, but in West Berlin rather than East Berlin.

 “Through the work we’ve put into 'Fiktionsbescheinigung', we’ve been able to bring the networks back together again, but I also ask myself how it might have been if filmmakers like Wanjiru Kinyanjui had been able to continue their careers here.” (Karina Griffith)

Cristina Nord: When I think of A LOVER & KILLER OF COLOUR, the short film by Wanjiru Kinyanjui showing in this year’s programme, or the work of Skip Norman, one of the first generation of dffb students, I see a greater openness for formal experimentation.

Karina Griffith: Yes, but one shouldn’t forget the context in which these films were made, namely at film school, which also means that the students were given tasks to complete, like working with different themes or genres, for example. They were just starting out, they still had a lot of learning to do.

Can Sungu: Sema Poyraz also studied at the dffb, and I notice just how much she engaged with the life of migrants in Berlin. That’s missing in the films from Babelsberg. That’s also to do with the fact that there was a Turkish community in West Berlin.

Cristina Nord: Karina, this year, you focused exclusively on the oeuvre of dffb student Wanjiru Kinyanjui. Two of her films are in the programme, A LOVER & KILLER OF COLOUR and DER KAMPF UM DEN HEILIGEN BAUM. In 2021, you also selected BLACK IN THE WESTERN WORLD. How do you see the relationship between the three films?

Karina Griffith: All three films certainly have strong female protagonists, although perhaps not at first glance in BLACK IN THE WESTERN WORLD. That film is, of course, more of a documentary, but the voice of Tsitsi Dangaremba plays a big role.

Cristina Nord: I had a sense of déjà vu when watching one scene in A LOVER & KILLER OF COLOUR. The protagonist is leafing through some sort of illustrated book containing pictures entirely commonplace in Germany in 1910 or 1905, you can see posters for human zoos and overly racist advertisements. It only appears here briefly, although it’s the leitmotif of BLACK IN THE WESTERN WORLD.

Karina Griffith: It’s definitely interesting to see how Wanjiru Kinyanjui makes use of books. In BLACK IN THE WESTERN WORLD, the books in question are about African and Kenyan culture and history. She uses them in an empowering way. I’m so happy that the Each One Teach One association in Wedding, where part of the film was shot, went on to open its Black empowerment library decades later. It’s almost like call and response!  

Cristina Nord: She shot her graduation film, the feature Der Kampf um den heiligen Baum, in Kenya. Do you know what she did afterwards? The background to my question is that several filmmakers spent a period of time in Germany and achieved some initial acclaim here before their careers abruptly ended. In some cases, like Raoul Peck and Idrissou Mora Kpai, their careers then continued elsewhere. On other cases, like Rafael Fuster Pardo, they just petered out.

Karina Griffith: I often see that in my research on Black German cinema. Racist structures prevent filmmakers from getting a foothold in Germany. For example, Idrissou Mora Kpai spoke to curator Enoka Ayemba and me in an interview back in 2021 about how difficult it was to get funding here. Today he’s a professor at Ithaca College in New York State. For me personally, as a film scholar and an artist, that means: he and others like him came before me, and I lack that generation of the community. Through the work we’ve carried out with "Fiktionsbescheinigung", we’ve been able to bring the networks back together again, but I also ask myself how it might have been if they’d been able to continue their careers here. Wanjiru Kinyanjui still works in film and teaches. And I think she still has a film in her.  

Cristina Nord: You already said that you carried out comprehensive archival research. What challenges did you face along the way?

Can Sungu: Anyone looking for films that aren’t seen as part of the so-called German film canon has to do detective work. And when you find something, …

Jacquline Nsiah: ... the prints are in a bad state.

Can Sungu: Sometimes the film prints hadn’t even been stored at all, there was just a poor quality digital file, sometimes the rights situation is unclear, and some archives just aren’t interested in giving out their prints. It’s not just about protecting or restoring films here, it’s primarily about showing them and keeping them in circulation. That’s what we’re doing with Fiktionsbescheinigung; for me, it’s particularly valuable that international audiences are able to see these films.

Cristina Nord: The Forum team are currently gathering materials on the films in the programme and have been noticing that even that is sometimes difficult, because there are no longer any film stills or because the question of who owns the rights to them is unresolved. We want to announce the films, and then there are no photos to do so. At the same, I’m happy that there are also positive things to report. The restoration of KARA KAFA is one example. Sohrab Shahid Saless’ ORDNUNG may not yet have been restored, but other films of his have been.  

Can Sungu: That’s true, and I’m always happy too when such restoration projects are set in motion and carried out. But I also think there’s a lot more to do.

"Looking forward into the future, I’d like to hope that a programme like 'Fiktionsbescheinigung' will no longer be as important because it will be a natural process for directors of color to take part in festivals and be seen." (Jacqueline Nsiah)

Cristina Nord: It’s the third year of Fiktionsbescheinigung. What goes through your heads when you look back at this time?

Jacqueline Nsiah: I’m happy that we’re giving visibility to films that deserve to be seen and thus also developing a new perspective on German history: immigration is part of that history, that’s how filmmakers whose biographies include immigration have seen it. Looking forward into the future, I’d like to hope that a programme like Fiktionsbescheinigung will no longer be as important because it will be a natural process for directors of color to take part in festivals and be seen. 

Karina Griffith: I don’t know if it’s possible to make up for what’s been neglected for so many years. Many of the filmmakers in this year’s programme are far from young any more and no longer able to travel to their premiere at the Berlinale. For some filmmakers, too much time has passed, acclaim arrived too late and the community which there could have been doesn’t exist because many filmmakers weren’t able to stay in Germany. If they’d stayed, they would have founded more German networks and institutions. It would have been clearer to everyone that there are Black German films which are part of how we understand German film and Germany itself.

Can Sungu: That’s true. It gives the younger generations courage to see that there are films like Oyoyo, Aufenthaltserlaubnis or MAN SA YAY. Then they notice that there were already people before them in similar spaces, in a similar situation. That they’re not the only ones.

Biographies of the participants:

Karina Griffith works as a film and installation artist and has been an artistic lecturer at the Universität der Künste in Berlin since 2018. She is working on her doctorate at the University of Toronto on the subject of Black German Cinema.

Jacqueline Nsiah is a freelance film festival, arts and cultural consultant. She currently works as a project manager for the Goethe-Institut’s African industry film platform cinidb.africa, and has been a member of the Berlinale Forum selection committee since 2019.

Can Sungu is a freelance artist, curator and researcher. He is co-founder and artistic director of the transnational cultural space bi’bak and the accompanying Sinema Transtopia in Berlin, and works as a programming consultant for the Berlinale Forum.

Cristina Nord was film editor at the Berlin newspaper “die tageszeitung” for many years. From 2015 to 2019, she was head of the Goethe-Institut‘s cultural programme for Southwest Europe. She has been head of the Berlinale Forum since August 2019.

Translated from the German by James Lattimer

Further articles and interviews about "Fiktionsbescheinigung":

Karina Griffith on "Affective Debt in Film"

Enoka Ayemba and Karina Griffith in conversation with Idrissou Mora-Kpai

Can Sungu's plea for transnational archival work  

Biene Pilavci and Enoka Ayemba on "Collective Learning" in conversation with Cristina Nord

Bilder denken #2: Karina Griffith and Can Sungu on the Forum podcast