Screening: “Champ of the Camp,” dir. Mahmoud Kaabour
Thursday, December 7, 2017 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST/GMT-5Bard College Berlin Lecture Hall
On December 7, Bard College Berlin is pleased to host award-winning filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour for a screening of his documentary “Champ of the Camp” (2013, 75 min.). The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
“Champ of the Camp” is the first-ever feature-length documentary filmed in the controversial labor camps of the United Arab Emirates. The film follows a massive Bollywood singing and trivia competition that searches across more than 70 camps throughout the country to find and crown the champ of all camps.
Narrated (and sung) entirely in the voices of the laborers, the film alternates between the X Factor–style suspense of the competition and the gritty reality of the labor environment, while weaving in intimate access scenes of their daily routines and emotional reflections on their life as laborers in Dubai.
The film screens as part of the class History and Memory: Forced Migration from 19th- to 21st-Century Germany, taught by Marion Detjen, and will give us the opportunity to discuss, at the end of the term, possibilities to include global migratory developments and their artistic reflections in the German memory culture.
The languages of the film are Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, and Bangladeshi.
With English subtitles.
Admission is free.
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