SCREENING #26

SCREENING #26
7 PM

TOUR at the Kunstverein
with Rebekka Seubert

8 PM
FILM at Kino im U
Ali in Paradise (My Name Is Not Ali)
Directed by: Viola Shafik, EGY/DE, 2001 (92')
Language: Original Version in Arabic, German, French, Subtitles: English

Rainer Werner Fassbinder received international recognition for his anti-racist film Angst essen Seele auf (1973). The protagonist, an Arab guest worker, was played by the Moroccan El Hedi Ben Salem M’barek Mohammed Mustafa, Fassbinder's then-lover. While the film courageously addresses the racism of post-war West Germany, its creators seem to show a certain indifference towards the real man, imagining their own version of Salem. Through interviews and archival footage, Viola Shafik reveals the imagination of El Hedi Ben Salem by the Fassbinder group in Ali im Paradies. An image that many of them have not revised to this day.

Viola Shafik grew up in Germany and Egypt. She is a freelance filmmaker, film curator, and film scholar and studied Fine Arts, Middle Eastern Studies, and Film Studies in Stuttgart and Hamburg. From 1998 to 2005, she lectured at the American University in Cairo, where she taught, among other things, courses in video production, introduction to cinema, film genres, documentary filmmaking, and the history of Arab cinema. Since 2007, Shafik has been a member of the selection committees for the al-Rawi Screenwriters Lab (Royal Film Commission, Jordan), the World Cinema Fund (Berlinale), and the Dubai Film Connection.

Text: Filmverleih mec film

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