A Guinean on Alexanderplatz, or the Possibility of Contesting the Dominant Narrative
Ewa Fiuk
ewa.fiuk@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Abstract
Are there any parallels between the life in the Weimar Republic and in present-day Germany? Is the fate of a labourer living in Berlin at the end of the 1920s comparable to the existence of an African refugee in the German capital today? And finally, is it possible to contemporize and to re-mediatize the story so that the time difference (almost a hundred years) and the media difference (book vs film) between its versions would not purge it of its charm and wisdom – in short, its significance? The answer to all these questions is: yes. The author of the article analyses similarities and differences between the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (1929) and the film Berlin Alexanderplatz by Burhan Qurbani (2020) in the context of postcolonial theory, social determinism, and the categories of the abject and victim introduced by Thomas Elsaesser.
Keywords:
Burhan Qurbani, Alfred Döblin, modern migration, postcolonialism, social determinism, abject, victimReferences
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Authors
Ewa Fiukewa.fiuk@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw); film writer and contributor to many magazines, periodicals and books; translator and interpreter working in Polish and German; editor of Kwartalnik Filmowy. Author of the books Inicjacje, tożsamość, pamięć. Kino niemieckie na przełomie wieków [Initiations, Identity, Memory: German Cinema at the Turn of Centuries] (2012) and Obrazo-światy, dźwięko-przestrzenie. Kino Toma Tykwera [Worlds of Images, Dimensions of Sounds: Cinematic Work of Tom Tykwer] (2016).
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