Black Berlin Black - Festivity SERIES OF DISCUSSIONS: WIDERSTÄNDIGES FEIERN

in spoken German with interpretation into spoken German and German Sign Language (DGS)

Stories and narratives are political. Not only in terms of who gets the opportunity to tell stories and whose stories we get to know, but also because they influence our identities and political developments. Stories and narratives have always been an important part of resistance movements. They make it possible to carry forward and sustain oppressed cultures. They provide room to process experienced injustice and to dream of a more just world. Thus, they have always been an important part of resistance movements.

Speculative fiction is not bound by the limits of reality. In this way, it opens up space especially for marginalized people to break out of the small boxes that the dominant society provides for them. Afrofuturism as a genre offers the opportunity to work through experienced suffering and to imagine a future from a Black perspective. Horror, by contrast, has always been a genre that holds a mirror up to society and – especially from a Black perspective – is able not only to depict the horrors of racism but also to give expression to the desire for justice.

And in recent years in particular, community screenings of films such as Black Panther, book clubs, and literature festivals have provided opportunities to come together and experience joy collectively.

In this panel, the Black storytellers, including Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner, Yezenia León Mezu and Lila Oji talk about the healing power of speculative fiction and about the possibility of these cultural formats celebrating their Blackness. 

Here, in the final event of the discussion series Widerständiges Feiern – by Fabienne Mahwane conceived especially for the festival Black Berlin Black – Festivity – we open up space for all the parallel stories that enrich our lives, grant rest and joy, and allow new futures to emerge.