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Featuring: Aykan Safoğlu, Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, Richard Dindo and Gelare Khoshgozaran
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile presents films that blend fiction and documentary practices in their profiles of writers living in exile. From Mahmoud Darwish to Jean Genet, the writers in these films are either onscreen presences or spectral conduits for reflecting on the heterogenous aspects of diasporic identity. Spanning from Lebanon to Los Angeles, the program generates several connective threads that transcend time and space, complicating rigid notions of national identity and venerating the potency of the written word as instrumental to a dialectic that’s fundamentally rooted in affirming human dignity.
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and DCTV's Firehouse Cinema. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of the program will be presented in-person at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, on July 29th starting 6:30 pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion between poet and scholar Sinan Antoon, and the curator Nick Kouhi. The full I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile program will be available online on artearchive.org from July 19 - 30, 2025.
Off-White Tulips is an intimate, meditative, and tender essay-film composed as a fictional exchange between James Baldwin and the artist, Aykan Safoğlu. The work is primarily structured around Magdalena J. Zaborowska’s scholarly reconstitution of Baldwin’s self-imposed exile in Istanbul, Ankara, and Bodrum between 1961 and 1971, as well as autobiographical notes and intimations gathered throughout the years. Safoğlu produced Off-White Tulips early on in his career when he was in the process of acquiring permanent residency in Germany. The work weaves Sedat Pakay's photographs depicting Baldwin throughout his decade living in Turkey, which was as productive as it was strenuous, with portraits of the artist and his family, including some that document the country’s 1979 oil crisis and its national entry in the Eurovision competition in 1980. As the film progressively unfolds, a speculative filiation is formed between the two figures through historical anecdotes, visual juxtapositions, and poetic interventions, inviting the viewer to ponder on alternative modes of performing kinship and thinking about inheritance.
- Year2013
- Runtime24 minutes
- LanguageTurkish
- CountryTurkey, Germany
- GenreExperimental / Speculative Fiction
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorAykan Safoğlu
Featuring: Aykan Safoğlu, Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, Richard Dindo and Gelare Khoshgozaran
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile presents films that blend fiction and documentary practices in their profiles of writers living in exile. From Mahmoud Darwish to Jean Genet, the writers in these films are either onscreen presences or spectral conduits for reflecting on the heterogenous aspects of diasporic identity. Spanning from Lebanon to Los Angeles, the program generates several connective threads that transcend time and space, complicating rigid notions of national identity and venerating the potency of the written word as instrumental to a dialectic that’s fundamentally rooted in affirming human dignity.
I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and DCTV's Firehouse Cinema. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of the program will be presented in-person at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, on July 29th starting 6:30 pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion between poet and scholar Sinan Antoon, and the curator Nick Kouhi. The full I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile program will be available online on artearchive.org from July 19 - 30, 2025.
Off-White Tulips is an intimate, meditative, and tender essay-film composed as a fictional exchange between James Baldwin and the artist, Aykan Safoğlu. The work is primarily structured around Magdalena J. Zaborowska’s scholarly reconstitution of Baldwin’s self-imposed exile in Istanbul, Ankara, and Bodrum between 1961 and 1971, as well as autobiographical notes and intimations gathered throughout the years. Safoğlu produced Off-White Tulips early on in his career when he was in the process of acquiring permanent residency in Germany. The work weaves Sedat Pakay's photographs depicting Baldwin throughout his decade living in Turkey, which was as productive as it was strenuous, with portraits of the artist and his family, including some that document the country’s 1979 oil crisis and its national entry in the Eurovision competition in 1980. As the film progressively unfolds, a speculative filiation is formed between the two figures through historical anecdotes, visual juxtapositions, and poetic interventions, inviting the viewer to ponder on alternative modes of performing kinship and thinking about inheritance.
- Year2013
- Runtime24 minutes
- LanguageTurkish
- CountryTurkey, Germany
- GenreExperimental / Speculative Fiction
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorAykan Safoğlu