In Dark Times

Full HD, 86 min. 2015/2016

World Premiere of the movie In The Dark Times by Sabine Küper-Büsch and Thomas Büsch at Pera Museum Istanbul, June 15, 2016 in cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and the Pera Museum.

IndieFest Film Awards, La Jolia, U S A 2016 – Section Documentary Feature, Award of Special Recognition

Produced by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul

The movie describes the life and cultural strategies of artists, actors, musicians and activists with forced migration background living in a host country like Turkey.

Bertolt Brecht defined culture already as an important strategy against oppression in his Svendborger Poems 1937.

This movie compares the life and suffering of todays forced migrants with the experiences of Bertolt Brecht who lived as migrant during the Nazi period in Scandinavia and the US.

It is an authentic document of the efforts of migrants and refugees from Syria to find meaning from suffering. It is about rethinking and rebuilding a culture outside of the native country. The audience will learn about the challenge to transform experiences to meaning and to culture.

Bertolt Brechts quotation – In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times – becomes a reference in how to make experiences of suffering and exile transmittable to others through film, music and writing.

The participants express their needs to develop new sensitivity, new imagination, new theories and new thinking beyond any suffering, beyond any violence and beyond any terror as implemented by governments like the Assad regime today in Syria.