Opening: 16.03.2024, 18:00–21:00

Home from Home is an exhibition in the form of a cinema program dedicated to notions of an (imaginary) home, migrant perspectives, and questions of post-nationality.

In different ways, the films reflect on the burden of history, suppressed existences, and the diverse cultural creations of a multilingual and multireligious Roma diaspora that has neither the possibility nor the intention of returning to a home (Fatima El-Tayeb). During the opening hours of the Halle für Kunst, short and feature-length films by Roma and non-Roma filmmakers, including Sejad Ademaj, Radu Jude, Ivana Mladenović, Perry Ogden, and Leonor Teles will be presented.

In contrast to promises of a transhistorical restoration of a lost homeland, here it is the very concept of an unlocatable, migrating, and imaginary home that gains meaning in the films on view: lack of belonging and perspective, traveling without arrival, and the incessant movement of bodies and languages in, through, and across spaces and borders.

Rather than perceiving this geographic, spatial, temporal, physical, and linguistic movement as a threat, agent of alienation, or state of emergency like countries like Germany have done and continue to do, the films also illustrate how the concept of diaspora embraces the strategy of disidentifying itself. Thus, it claims a place within a nation that grows beyond it—beyond its borders and the political codes of modern citizenship: a home that dwells in longing, the imperfect process of remembering.

Alongside the cinema program, the exhibition displays collected and traveled objects of remembrance and trinkets of everyday life as prospective memorabilia. Ambivalent, versatile, and based on practicality and ingenuity, these objects embody prestige as wandering talismans, the appropriation of Western lifestyle culture, and ultimately also serve as an indispensable “survival strategy” that has emerged from a history of marginalization (Daniel Baker).

Text: Elisa R. Linn

The exhibition is conceived in collaboration with Carmen Gheorghe.

The cinema program runs daily from 12 – 6 p.m. during the opening hours of the Halle für Kunst.

The films address issues such as violence, experiences of migration and suicide and can be disturbing.

Leonor Teles: Rhoma Acans, 2012
14 Min.
(12:00 Uhr)
Portuguese with English subtitles

Ivana Mladenović: Turn Off the Lights, 2012
71 Min.
(12:12 Uhr)
Romanian, Romanes with English subtitles

Radu Jude: Aferim!, 2015
108 Min.
(14:25 Uhr)
Romanian, Turkish, Romani with English subtitles 

Perry Ogden: Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl, 2005
87 Min.
(16:05 Uhr)
English

Sejad Ademaj: 15 Minuten, 2022
13 Min.
(17:30 Uhr)
German, Romanes with German subtitles

Leonor Teles: Balada de um Batráquio, 2016
11 Min.
(17:45 Uhr)
Portuguese with English subtitles

The annual program and the exhibition at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. is funded by the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Lüneburgischer Landschaftsverband, and Hansestadt Lüneburg. The educational program at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. is funded by the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and VGH-Stiftung.