SALAAM ALEYKUM COPENHAGEN
Slovakia/Slovenia/Denmark, 2008, 19 min
Sašo Niskač
29.01.2010 22:20
Salaam Aleykum Copenhagen is a short documentary about Haluk, Allan and Iman – two young boys and a girl with Turkish, Kurdish, Lebanese and Danish backgrounds living in Copenhagen. How do they confront their lives with the atmosphere of Copenhagen, their home? The film is a portrait of their attitudes towards the questions of immigration and integration, their daily problems and challenges, family values, their view on Danish society and Copenhagen itself. While presenting their worlds they are opening the doors towards understanding of Copenhagen itself. They are part of Copenhagen and Copenhagen is part of them.
“...It is hard and then people say: you are well integrated, and I think: what is “well integrated”? Is it when Danes feel I am well integrated or the immigrants feel I am well integrated? Or is it when I myself feel that now I can tackle the two cultures?”...”I have learned to drink my girlfriend’s homeopathic drops, medicine, and she drinks my Kurdish tea each day, and that is for example integration. But I am tired of the word ‘integration’.”
Awards: Special Jury Mention, Platforma Video8 Fil Festival, November 2008, Athens, Greece; selected for The Best of Kino OTOK Film Festival - Video na Plazi, october 2009, Izola, Slovenia
Language of dialogues: Danish
Language of subtitles: English
Country Clubs or ‘Countries’ are gated communities on the outskirts of Argentina’s cities. Under the watchful eye of the private security firms hired to protect them, the clubs act as an oasis of calm for the Argentine rich. In such an environment people in the ‘Countries’ enjoy an apparently idyllic, safe existence surrounded by tennis courts, football fields, golf courses, polo pitches, shopping facilities and sometimes even private schools. Yet this film shows the dilemma and the inner-struggle of those who were born into a privileged position in a state that fails to provide social amenities, justice or peace for the majority of its people.
The documentary film is a part of a multimedia study which consists of visual and editorial parts. Apart from the film, the DVD offers thematically digested shots recorded in scope of the research and a photogallery. Visual as well as editorial part connects possibilities of verbal and visual language and is bound to serve as an interception of the complexity of the observed march and to the representation of the dance as a cultural context. The complexity should help to reveal and deliver the connotation of the traditional event in today´s local society. The documentary can be publicised separately as well and its informational value does not depend on the supporting text of the multimedia study.