SCHAUMÄLER

What can a 100-year old gramophone recording from Afghanistan tell us about the constitution of collective memory? Markus Schlaffke follows the trail of a recording by the Kabul rubab player Qurban Ali from its creation in 1926 in a studio in Lahore to its re-enactment using a phonograph in 2021 in Weimar. The history of the invention of the Edison phonograph, the first media-philosophical reflections on the meaning of the “sound writer”, the practice of oral tradition in Kabul’s traditional musicians’ district “Kucheh Kharabat” and the filmmakers own musical practice are discussed. What distinguishes the mechanical memory of a machine from the living memories of a human? How does the machine draw a track into the material of the sound carrier and thus involve us in a global network of shared musical memories?

Im Jahr der Thüringer Landtagswahl begleitet der Film in Erfurt lebende Migrantinnen und Migranten. Es zeigt sich, dass es die behauptete Parallelgesellschaft von Zugewanderten in dieser Weise nicht gibt, sondern dass es auf Seiten der Migranten zahlreiche Bemühungen gibt, auf die deutschen Nachbarn zuzugehen, sich zu engagieren, an der demokratischen Öffentlichkeit teilzuhaben und die Herausforderungen der Integration anzunehmen.

Was hat die Flucht aus der DDR mit heute gemeinsam?
In der Videoausstellung erzählen Menschen, die aktuell aus Syrien, und Menschen, die damals über die innerdeutsche Grenze geflohen sind, ihre Fluchtgeschichte.

Mit Interviews von Menschen, die ihre Heimat verlassen haben, werden in der Ausstellung die politischen Situationen, die zur Flucht führten, aufgezeigt. Die oftmals gefährlichen Fluchtwege, aber auch die Situationen des Abschieds und des Ankommens, werden authentisch von den Zeitzeug*innen dargestellt.

(Im Auftrag von Eine Welt Netzwerk Thüringen – EWNT)

2017/18 fanden Dreharbeiten im Kindergarten Kinderland in Weimar West statt. Mit der Hilfe des Filmemachers Markus Schlaffke entstand aus Interviews, Gesprächen und Szenen in den Kindergruppen der erste Film über das Weimarer Mentoring-Programm.

Er gibt einen Überblick über die Inhalte und praktische Anwendung des WMP. Viele Kinderszenen tragen insbesondere zum Verständnis der zugrunde liegenden pädagogischen Haltung bei. Zu Wort kommen Dr. Lorna Heyge, die Kita-Leitung, pädagogische Fachkräfte, eine Mutter sowie eine Fachberaterin.

Yellow Barn, an international center for chamber music, encourages discovery in the studio, classroom, and concert hall; explores the craft of musical interpretation; and illuminates our world through the unique experience of music. Twice awarded the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming, Yellow Barn’s approach to lifelong education for musicians and audiences, commitment to quality and a unique philosophy, and programs that focus listeners in new ways, set it apart from any other chamber music center in this country.

On May 25 1916, a young man named Abdul Kadir Khan sang in his mother tongue Pashto into a gramophone, more than 6000 Kilometers away from his home.
His song was recorded during World War I in Germany, in the „Halfmoon Camp“ south of Berlin, where so called colonial soldiers who served in the British Army were captured as prisoners of war.
Abdul Kadir was one of them. Now, 100 years later, his recording ist being brought back to its origins in Afghanistan.
Musicians at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul get to listen to it for the first time.
It turns out, that the song recorded in 1916, is well known as “gul de pa zulfo” in Afghanistan until today.
As part of the Safar-program it is going to be performed in a series of concerts in Germany, in September 2016.

Sarod-maestro Irfan Muhammad Khan is the last representative of a musical family dynasty in India – the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur-Gharana. After teaching music in Kabul for three years, he returns to India to resume his concert career there and to arrange the family affairs. He is worried about the musical heritage of his lineage, because he is the last one who still knows the old compositions of his forefathers. The film tells the story of some of the most influential Indian musicians and of a journey through a landscape of memories.