Coming back to Berlin on the 1st October after having spent August and September in Damascus and Beirut I had no time to think about getting used to the cold weather or re-adapt myself to life in the German capital. The opening of “A Silent Cinema. Highlights des syrischen Kinos” (Highlights of Syrian Cinema), a week-long program of Syrian films and videos from the last 35 years was drawing close and with it came an exciting time with interviews and a round table meeting at Heinrich Böll Foundation focusing on representation(s) of “the Other” in film and media. The latter was a very ambitious project but could have benefited from more time. Of course this is always the case and not always entirely in the hands of organizers to decide. Funding also plays a large role here. But the participants were all interesting and did open up some new lines of thought. Would have been good to follow up on that.

The day after my arrival, in rain and strong wind, I attended the opening of “Con-Fusion”, a joint installation project by Susanne Ruoff and Salah Saouli. Using the space of the ruin of the Fransiscan Monastery Church in Berlin-Mitte (a space hitherto unknown to me, just off Alexanderplatz) the artists showed two powerful works that interacted both with the space and with each other. Ruoff’s work, a 15 m long “red carpet” formed out of numerous stone fragments, seemingly welcoming and yet insurmountable and Saouli’s installation of suspended black jackets, weightlessly floating in the air in the choir of the church both play with the ambivalence of the place itself and the ambivalence of their many references.

The space, a High Gothic brick church, one of the oldest churches of Berlin was destroyed in the Anglo-American bombings of the city during WW II. It is in itself a symbol of both destruction and endurance, of a human presence that suffers yet prevails. A ghostly witness to inhumanity that seems to call to our minds that nothing is left without a trace. In the introductory words of Ralf F. Hartmann’s (whose opening speech was so refreshingly different from the usual exhibition opening talks - it offered fascinating new ideas and insights), the carpet, red as the colour of blood and fragmented as the ruin it is placed within carries with it the double significance of Via Gloriosa and Via Dolorosa, paralleling the ambivalence of the church, turned into a ruin by the course of history. Interestingly enough, the free floating jackets, yielding to the wind’s movements add a light and reconciling dimension to Saouli’s work, offering a certain relief and hope (for resurrection?) to the visitor who after the hardship symbolized by the carpet of broken stones is longing for a place of rest. Their otherwise uncanny and haunting presence, reminders of the ghosts of the past suddenly seem almost playful. The semi-circular choir seems to collect them, offer comfort and lead to the open space above, freed at last of earthly burdens.

A place as powerful as this ruined church is a highly difficult space to create a contemporary art work in. There is a great risk of being swallowed up by the space. But Susanne Ruoff and Salah Saouli have managed to steer free of this. Both works are understated and pure yet immensely powerful, nothing is left to chance and nothing is superfluous. In this they are worthy parallels to the symbolism of the space while standing out as individual artistic positions.

A week later, on the 8th October, my Syrian film program “A Silent Cinema. Highlights des syrischen Kinos” opened at Arsenal, Institute of Film and Video Art. It is with a great sense of relief that I can call it a success, since its realization was at times slightly difficult. While my work normally focuses on young, independent film and video making, this program combined works by well-known Syrian film makers such as Hala Alabdallah, Omar Amiralay, Mohammad Malas and Oussama Mohammad with the works of the young generation of film makers. And although Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted the “Arab-Iranian Film Days” during the same period, the audience numbers were still excellent. It was a unique chance to (re)view some rare films from a country with an impressive, but only sparsely known cinematic tradition. And as some Syrian students among the public remarked, it was only now in Berlin that they actually got to see some of the films they had heard so much about. It is words like these that make my efforts especially worthwhile.

Although Syria has produced a number of excellent films, films that have gained international interest among critics, these films are only rarely shown. The necessary permission procedures at the National Film Organization in Damascus are long and often the result is unknown, and so many festival and event organizers refrain from even trying to screen these films. And often the copies are in a deplorable state. Together with Arsenal, I made a conscious choice to show all films in digital copies. I was happy to work together with ArteEast, a New York based art and culture organization specializing in Middle East, who some years ago collected an archive of Syrian films. Their copies were made from the best available copies in the archives of the NFO in Damascus, but preservation conditions there are insufficient, leaving many films from the 1980s and 90s look like the earliest Hollywood Technicolor productions.

However, the choice was either to show the films in the state they are in or not show them at all, and so we opted for the last. My program was built on the films from ArteEast’s archive together with my own collection of new experimental films and videos, gathered during the past years. I hope to be able to show these kinds of programs more often, thus adding a modest contribution to making Syrian cinema more widely known.