The Ailing City: Displacement and Addiction in Gegen die Wand

Cities are modernity's ever-changing hubs of people, architectures and culture. Time and time again, the intense urban environment has been perceived as causing sickness or influencing the experiences of illness. The metaphorical rhetoric of disease has also been applied to unwanted transformations of city architecture and culture.

Organised by the Ephemeral Cities Research Group, the screening series "The Ailing City" explores how film engages with (and reflects) illness and perceptions of sickness and health in urban space. Over the course of five Thursday evenings in May and June 2016, we will explore bodily illness, states of mind, and urban decay and rejuvenation through film.

Gegen die Wand (English title: Head-On, Fatih Akin, 2004) tells the story of Cahit and Sibel, two Turkish Germans living in Hamburg. Cahit struggles with an alcohol addiction and suicidal feelings since the death of his wife. Sibel feels restricted by her family and attempts suicide. When they meet in the psychriatric clinic, Sibel suggests that they get married so that she can escape her parental home. Cahit reluctantly agrees, but the agreement has consequences beyond what either of them could foresee.

The screening will be followed by an interdisciplinary discussion with Prof Daniela Berghahn and Dr Sarra Kassem.

Daniela Berghahn is Professor of Film Studies in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has widely published on post-war German cinema, the relationship between film, history and cultural memory and transnational cinema. Her extensive work on migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe has been supported by the AHRC and is documented on the websites www.farflungfamilies.net and www.migrantcinema.net. She is currently developing a research project that explores the decentered exotic in contemporary transnational cinema.

Dr. Sarra Kassem wrote her Ph.D on the representation of post-migrants in the films of Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin. Her BA and MA thesis looked at the representation of crime in the media, focusing on print media and film respectively. Sarra has been working as a researcher for Euromonitor International since 2006, conducting and commissioning research on Greece and Africa and Middle East. Her research interests are broad and involve German film, European cinema, migration studies and social construction of deviance among others.

A wine reception will follow the discussion. The series is generously supported by the IAS-Octagon Research fund.

Further links:

• RSVP on Eventbrite
• The Ailing City series page