Director: Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
France, Belgium, siyah-beyaz / black & white, 2007, 102’
French, Fula with Turkish subtitles

Le Cercle des Noyés is the term for a group of political prisoners arrested in Mauritania in 1986 because of their fight for equal rights for blacks, and who, cut off from the outside world, were incarcerated in a fortress in the desert for years. There they had to endure inhumane conditions, humiliation, forced labor, and torture. Le Cercle des Noyés is a political documentary that is reflective both aesthetically and politically in equal parts, without causing one to suffer at the expense of the other. A text, read calmly and with great dignity, consisting of the testimonies and memories of the prisoners, never rehabilitated, is juxtaposed with stunningly impressive black-and-white images from 2006 – “scenes of the crime” that bear no traces of the past, just as if nothing had ever happened. The film is not so much an analysis of the historical and sociopolitical background in Mauritania as it is about the paradigms of political tyranny, misuse of power, injustice, and torture. As such, it can be understood not only as a gesture against forgetting, but also as a parable that can extend as far as Guantánamo.

Odessa...Odessa!

Odessa...Odessa!

Nostalgia For The Light

Nostalgia For The Light

The Hour Of Berger

The Hour Of Berger

Land Of The Wandering Souls

Land Of The Wandering Souls

Drowned In Oblivion

Drowned In Oblivion

Midnight Stories: The Red Button <br> Funda Özlem Şeran

Midnight Stories: The Red Button
Funda Özlem Şeran

It was a quiet night in the dessert. Even the mice weren’t around. A few LEDs blinked in the dark, and the sound of a fan filled the infinite void. The conversation cutting the silence seemed to go nowhere.

The Conventions of Identity

The Conventions of Identity

The exhibition “Look At Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection” examined portraiture, one of the oldest artistic genres, through a significant number of works of our times. Paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos shaped a labyrinth of gazes that invite spectators to reflect themselves in the social mirror of portraits.

Female Attires from the Perspective of Painters

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Due to its existence behind closed doors, the lifestyle and attires of the women in the Harem have been one of the most fascinating topics for western painters and art enthusiasts alike.