Film program 2013

curated by Peter Grabher

During the Wagner-Year 2013, the myth of the artistic genius flourishes, while Wagner´s exile in Zürich is being used as an opportunity to present Switzerland as a refuge for those who run for shelter. What stays blanked out is that Wagner developed his anti-Semitism in pamphlets like „Jewishness in Music“ (german: „Das Judenthum in der Musik“, 1850) here in Zürich, that Switzerland´s borders stayed closed for thousands of people during World War II and that the country is part of „Fortress Europe“ today. Like in most EU countries, swiss social and asylum policies marginalize and criminalize Jeni, Sinti and Roma, refugees, sans papiers and the poor – who in turn fight for their rights and self-determination.

The annual program of Shedhalle establishes the constellation /Wagner, Roma and Switzerland/ and points to what is going on today. The film series sheds light on how border and identity regimes can be challenged through other concepts of existential territory; how empowerment and filmic self-determination can leverage audiovisual, racist and biopolitical systems of exclusion; how the marginalized can intervene into the dominant order of history, history politics and politics of the presence; which positions beyond hegemonic violence could be seized by film makers and artists. In this way, the film series collects films that talk about historical and current exclusion in Switzerland; films that reveal history-political power relations; films that show the presence of Jeni, Sinti and Roma in (filmic) history and today but also problematize how they are made invisible; films which formulate selfdetermined image politics; films that make visible and audible the politics of music between the cult of the genius and ethnicizing/folklore.

Peter Grabher,

born 1969, historian and film scholar, teaches at a viennese college. 2006/07 research stay at the École normale supérieure, Paris. Works on his dissertation under the title »›here and elsewhere‹. Palestine-Israel in essay film«. Literature: »Sowjet-Projektionen. Die Filmarbeit der kommunistischen Organisationen in der Ersten Republik (1918-1933)«, in: Christian Dewald (Ed.), Arbeiterkino. Linke Filmkultur der Ersten Republik, Wien: Filmarchiv Austria 2007. Member oft he viennese group KINOKI (http://www.kinoki.at).