Events
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3.8.2018 | ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin

I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino: Die Kümmeltürkin geht (Melek leaves)

Dinner and film screening

I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not #21: I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino
Die Kümmeltürkin geht (Melek leaves, 1985) by Jeanine Meerapfel
Selected by the 10th Berlin Biennale curatorial team
Host: Çiçek Bacik

Produced in the mid-1980s, the film contrasts the expression “foreigner problem” with the reality of an individual fate: Melek, a 38-year-old Turkish woman, is leaving West Berlin after fourteen years to return to her homeland. She is, as she says plainly, "fed up." Melek does not fit the cliché of the oppressed Turkish woman. She is confident, smart, realistic; there’s a smile around her mouth and sadness in her eyes. And yet years of unsuccessful attempts, disappointments, and humiliations and "having to fit in" have finally worn down the spirited woman with the bounce-back nature. With numerous suitcases and unwavering confidence in a better future in her native country, she returns to Turkey.

The film is a portrait of an unusual woman, a survivalist, who forces us to examine our preconceptions of a "typical" Turkish woman. A sensitive portrait of a fascinating woman set against a troubling political background.

ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics’ regular Speisekino format combines films and food around a particular topic. Sometimes the relation is obvious, and food from the region where the film is set is served. Sometimes the link between the two is more subtle, when for example the film is accompanied by a dish that also appears in the plot. Throughout its running time, the 10th Berlin Biennale collaborates with ZK/U for I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino and invites various hosts to select and present food and footage around aspects of the 10th Berlin Biennale.