Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride

Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride

DIRECTED BY: Maroan el Sani, Nina Fischer COUNTRY: Germany YEAR: 2020 SPOKEN LANGUAGE(S): German SUBTITLES: English RUNNING TIME: 20 min

SECTION: International Forum

SCREENINGS

SYNOPSIS

Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride investigates the strange German enthusiasm for Native Americans in relation to contemporary racism and its deep colonial roots.
This fascination, especially with regard to the construction of a german identity, has a rather frightening than impressive chronology: it begins with the first-century Germanic Cherusci chieftan Arminius and stretches to the adventure novels of Karl May and the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows in the 1800s, through the ethnographic exhibitions (Völkerschauen) in zoos and circuses and founding of “Indian clubs” at the turn of the twentieth century, onward to the appropriation of Indigenous identities by Nazi ideologists, up until the present day, when new rightwing groups have developed an unsettling identification with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

This film is part of our short film programme “German (Hi)stories”.

BIOGRAPHY
The Berlin-based artist duo Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani has been collaborating on their interventional and situationist art practice since 1995. Their investigations revolve around moving images as both impartial documents and involved narrations of our changing societies. The main protagonists of their projects are often urban spaces that bear the burden of collective memory, upon which the forces of historical transition and turmoil have been engraved. The artists’ poetic-filmic and performative investigations of these sites tackle the idea of revisiting blind spots in contemporary society through their artistic reanimation of such places.

FILMOGRAPHY
Be supernatural (1995), Familyland (1996), Lumber, hab Sonne im Herzen (1997), Klub 2000 – Rom, Paris, Marzahn (1998), See you tomorrow (1999), Hong Kong will sing (2001) Berlin(sunrise) – 10 sec. thinking about the future (2001), Tokyo Star (2004), Die Künstler – 10 sec. thinking about the future (2005), xoo – ex ovo omnia (2006), Toute la mémoire du monde – Alles Wissen dieser Welt (2006), The Rise (2007), Sayonara Hashima (2009), Narita Field Trip (2010), Snow Division (2010), The Line (2010), Spirits closing their eyes (2013), I Live in Fear – After March 11 (2014), Contaminated Home (2014), Dynamis (2014), Der Dreisatz der Identität (2016), Freedom of Movement (2018), Appropriation takes you on a weird ride (2020)

SCRIPT: Nina Fischer, Maroan el Sani PRODUCER: Nina Fischer, Maroan el Sani CINEMATOGRAPHY: Matthias Biber EDITOR: Nina Fischer, Maroan el Sani

WEBSITE: https://www.fischerelsani.net/film/appropriation-takes-you-on-a-weird-ride/