Listening, staging, talking - Feminist decolonial cinematic practice by Pary El-Qalqili

Two-day workshop12.03.23 - 19.03.23 10am-6pm Who is the one to be looked at? And who is the one looking through the eye of the camera? What is the dynamic between the one who is supposed to speak and perform and the one who is listening and gazing? How can we create a cinematic space that is not reproducing structures of violence and enforcing silences? This workshop will allow the participants to decipher, name and question hierarchic, exploiting and dehumanizing cinematic situations. In a second step the participants will have the opportunity to explore cinematic strategies of listening, staging and talking that make an alternative cinematic encounter possible. It will enable the participants to examine their own cinematic practice and to envision new working methods.

The course consists of three parts :

• reading (Black) feminist and decolonial texts, critical texts on ethnographic filmmaking and the violence of different forms of gazing (the male gaze, the white gaze, the genocidal gaze)
• Watching, analyzing and discussing cinematic strategies that intend to subvert power relations.
• Practical exercises that enable the participants to reflect on their own approach to a) „active listening“ b) staging a safe cinematic space, c) explore techniques that allow the other to speak freely

Pary El Qalqili works as a filmmaker, curator and lecturer in Berlin. In her cinematic work she explores fragmentary narratives about life in exile, colonized life and structures of violence. Her films have won several international awards including Regard Neuf, Visions du Réel, Best Film Dubai International Film Festival, Aljazeera Golden Award, Best Documentary Asiaticafilmmediale, Rome...Her work has been supported by La Scam, FFA/CNC, Gerd Ruge Stipendium, Grenzgänger Stipendium of Robert Bosch Stiftung, Akademie der Künste, Künstlerinnenprogramm FIlm/Video of the City of Berlin. She teaches feminist and decolonial film history, theory and practice at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Barenboim Said Academy.