Dekoloniale Film Series at Sinema Transtopia
“Decolonial Visions in Diaspora Cinema” | Colonial history isn’t just a thing of the past. It shapes our memories and knowledge in the present; how we remember and what we know (and can know).
A history that normalizes and obscures destruction and exploitation through official, hegemonic narratives must be revised from the perspective of postcolonial cultural productions: cultural works that broaden and reimagine the scope of what we can see, understand, and articulate, and how we relate to each other.
Highlighting such works is the aim of the film series Decolonial Visions in Diaspora Cinema. It sheds light on the Asia-Pacific region as one of the previously overlooked sites of various, overlapping forms of colonialism.
The focus is on works by Asian-diasporic filmmakers who, from within the ambivalence of being part of a diaspora, meaning being both part of and in conflict with homogenizing national-ethnic and patriarchal-heteronormative identity politics – present alternatives to mainstream colonial knowledge. Through their playful and sometimes risky approach, they break down genre categories and center marginalized knowledge.
In four screenings and subsequent discussions with the filmmakers, diaspora is negotiated as a condition of possibility for critical-creative, decolonial memory work and cultural practice.
Highlight
At all four screenings, filmmakers will be present, in person or online, to the subsequent film discussion.