On the 9th of May Ms. Alina Jabbari, CGDS Visiting Scholar and former Jan Warner Visiting Scholar, hosted the award winning Kurdish-Dutch filmmaker Beri Shalmashi in her class, “National Identity and Diaspora Politics” (IST 399). This online guest lecture was part of the final section of the course, “Imagining the Homeland through Cinema, Literature, and Art.” As such, Beri spoke about her experience in the film industry and what compels her to make Kurdish films. She shared her dilemma with regards to dreaming about shooting a romantic comedy, but feeling responsible for showing the too often untold Kurdish experiences on screen. She spoke about the evolution in the ‘foreign’ language category and how it has become increasingly acceptable to use the Kurdish language in film, as well as the challenge in Kurdish cinema not to tailor itself to a solely non-Kurdish audience. She also explained the financial obstacles and many limitations involved when wanting to tell the story her way, and how Kurdish cinema is still in its early stages. Students asked questions about when Kurdish cinema will make it to internationally renowned awards ceremonies such as the Oscars; the challenge of telling ordinary people’s stories as opposed to the emphasis on Kurdish suffering in film; the necessity of showing present-day challenges in Kurdish societies as opposed to the emphasis on narratives of the past; how not to look at the Western film industry as an example, but to build our own film language, and how to prevent the negative portrayals of Kurds in film. Beri ended the class on a hopeful note: “The last decade Kurdish cinema has seen an increase in young, talented film makers and screen writers and we no longer have only one or two names in the industry. We are slowly moving towards establishing our own film language and within five years from now we will certainly be far ahead from where we are now.”
Image description: Ten people—seven men and three woman—stand in a row in front of a large screen projecting the image of a woman’s head. Behind the group we see windows; desks are visible in front.