Bacha Posh

Producer: Ray Peter Maletzki, Stephan Helmut Beier

Country:

The two-channel installation Bacha Posh is a multifaceted documentary focusing on the Afghan tradition of dressing girls as boys in order for them to be able to fulfill the function of a male family member. Framed by atmospheric shots of urban landscapes in Mazar-e-Sharif, Bacha Posh follows the life of 13-year-old Farahnaz, adding unexpected perspectives to the discourse around the social construction of gender. Presented on two screens, the work contrasts the private and the public, interior and exterior spheres.

Yalda Afsah
German-Iranian artist and filmmaker Yalda Afsah (b. 1983, Berlin) explores how space can be cinematically constructed as her films profoundly explore the interface between reality and staging. This formal characteristic of Afsah’s work is conceptually mirrored in her recent portraits of human-animal relationships that reveal an ambivalence between care and control, physical strength and broken will, instinct and manipulation. Despite their documentary focus, her films and video installations seem to capture symbiotic choreographies on screen – equally portraying and fictionalising their human and non-human protagonists. Afsah has presented her work at various exhibitions and festivals including Manifesta 13, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Berlinische Galerie, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and recent solo exhibitions at Kunstverein München and Halle für Kunst Steiermark. Since 2019 she is a mentor for the Berlin program for artists (BPA).

Yalda Afsah

German-Iranian artist and filmmaker Yalda Afsah (b. 1983, Berlin) explores how space can be cinematically constructed as her films profoundly explore the interface between reality and staging. This formal characteristic of Afsah’s work is conceptually mirrored in her recent portraits of human-animal relationships that reveal an ambivalence between care and control, physical strength and broken will, instinct and manipulation. Despite their documentary focus, her films and video installations seem to capture symbiotic choreographies on screen – equally portraying and fictionalising their human and non-human protagonists. Afsah has presented her work at various exhibitions and festivals including Manifesta 13, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Berlinische Galerie, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and recent solo exhibitions at Kunstverein München and Halle für Kunst Steiermark. Since 2019 she is a mentor for the Berlin program for artists (BPA).

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Ginan Seidl

Ginan Seidl: The artist and filmmaker of German-Iraqi descent explores the boundaries between documentary and fictional filmmaking and video installations, where the fabulative becomes a poetic and essential extension of the documentary material. She explores different perspectives and cosmogonies in order to relate, learn and find new forms of exchange and production of knowledge and experience through cinematic means. The focus is on the complex relationships with the self, the "other" and non-human actors in different local contexts. Many of her past as well as present projects have been (further) developed in residencies in Istanbul, Mexico and Beirut, among others. Her work has been shown at international festivals such as Berlinale/Forum Expanded, FID Marseille, CPH:DOX, Dokfilmfest Leipzig, EMAF and in various exhibitions and art festivals. She is part of the artist collective FILZ. She lives and works in Halle/Saale, Berlin and Mexico City.

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