Contribution short abstract:

In 2000 I conducted longterm visual anthropological fieldwork in a small village in northern Syria. This film uses digital video footage from 22 years ago in Syria mixed with recordings of the same people now dispersed throughout the world. They tell their stories of flight and memories of the past.

Contribution long abstract:

The world is in Syria and Syrians are in the world. Between the years 2000 and 2004, I conducted visual anthropological fieldwork in a rural village in Syria called Shallalah Saghirah (Little Waterfall) which was the basis of my ethnographic feature-length film Shallalah Saghirah. In 2013, a major massacre took place in the small village next to it and 208 women and children were murdered in cold blood. Shallalah Saghirah was abandoned. After having heard about the massacre and after months of searching, I finally reconnected with the people from Shallalah Saghirah in 2014, some of whom have become refugees in Germany and the Netherlands. In this film, I revisit them, we reminisce about the village, they tell the stories of their journeys of flight and how they see their new life whilst reflecting on the past life in the village. In this session, I will screen work-in-progress, currently in the postproduction phase. Going through more than a 20 year old archive with many different storylines, in particular I would like to have feedback on the narrative structure of the film. This is a link to my work in progress: https://youtu.be/h0W-x1W_9F0