Invocations: 
UNITED SCREENS.
ON CINEMA BEYOND THE BORDERS OF THE SCREEN

Within the framework of Edit Film Culture!, UNITED SCREENS opens its first chapter of a long-term research project including exhibitions, symposia, interviews etc. to observe divergent film cultures and enquire into the possibility of a decentralised ecosystem for cinema and film distribution powered by technology.

As part of the project, SAVVY Contemporary hosts two days of INVOCATIONS featuring screening and moderated talks, which aim to map global film cultures and to challenge dominant (German) film culture, respectively. After the first part of the Invocations, COMING SOON TO YOUR SCREENS: On Archives, Legacies, and New Waves of Sudanese Cinema, co-hosted by Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, we invite you to the second conversation. Oliver Hardt, Amelia Umuhire, and Verena von Stackelberg are three film professionals from shooting, directing, producing, and cinema-programming backgrounds who work in Germany, but at the margins of German film culture. With them, we will discuss how, either by choice or due to discrimination, they have come to work at the margins of German film and what different perspectives this gives them.

OLIVER HARDT is a director and filmmaker based in Frankfurt am Main. In his documentaries, he frequently addresses black history and culture with a strong emphasis on architecture, design and contemporary art. His roster of internationally acclaimed documentary films includes Black Deutschland, the first cinematic exploration of black life in Germany; The United States of Hoodoo, a road trip to the spiritual sources of African-American culture; David Adjaye – Collaborations, an intimate portrait of the Ghanaian-British star architect through the eyes of his friends, collaborators, and clients; and most recently The Black Museum, a tv documentary for Arte about the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. His film The Black Museum, about the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is available for streaming on arte.tv until 16.07.2018.

AMELIA UMUHIRE born in Rwanda, grew up on the Lower Rhine, and now lives in Berlin and Kigali, where she works as a director and author. In 2015 she published the web series "Polyglot", which has won several German and international awards. Her short film "Mugabo" (Rwanda / 2017) has been screened at MOCA Los Angeles, MCA Chicago and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, among others. It also received an award for Best Experimental Film at Blackstar Festival 2017 in Philadelphia. She is the author and director of the radio feature "Vaterland", commissioned and produced by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

VERENA VON STACKELBERGis the founder and managing director of the independent cinema Wolf Kino in Berlin. She has worked in film exhibition, distribution and festivals, including at Curzon Cinemas, Filmgalerie 451, the Cambridge Film Festival and the Berlinale. When she decided to create Wolf, her dream was to build a place with an emphasis on critical exchange between filmmakers and film lovers, and between the neighbourhood and the wider international film community.