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
In the summer of 2001 the IWF in Göttingen hosted the conference »Origins of Visual Anthropology – Putting the Past Together«. Important representatives of the field came together to discuss the history of the subdiscipline. Three students were equally interested in their visions about »The Future of Visual Anthropology«. They conducted brief interviews concerning this question with filmmakers and scholars such as Jean Rouch, Ian Dunlop, Paul Henley, Karl Heider, Howard Morphy, Peter Crawford, Harald Prins and Jay Ruby.
In October 2007, a group of artists of different nationalities set up atablao flamenco in front of Seville’s Cathedral. They claimed this public space as a place to exhibit and express their art. The audience’s applause transformed these artists into the flamenco group “Son de Afuera” (Not from here). This short documentary shows what it means to feel and create flamenco from “outside” in the context of Andalusian society.