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Romuald Karmakar
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Hamburger Lektionen, 2006

In his film Hamburger Lektionen [Hamburg Lessons], the German film-maker Romuald Karmakar takes up the inflammatory preaching of the Imam Mohammed Fazazi in the Hamburg Al-Quds-Mosque in 2000. In it the Imam gives answers drawn from the Sharia to questions of everyday life and elucidates Islamic dogma whilst totally rejecting, for example, basic democratic rights. In the film, the actor Manfred Zapatka performs the transcribed texts. In the subtitles, background noises from the mosque are occasionally indicated, and they make the preceding socio-cultural surroundings evident and lift the anonymity of the studio setting. In this abstract presentation, the propaganda material becomes a document, which demonstrates the internal structure of inflammatory preaching and the radical rejection of rules drafted in any way differently.

Romuald Karmakar, * 1965 in Wiesbaden (D), lives and works in Berlin (D)

Romuald Karmakar, Hamburger Lektionen, 2006
digital projection (colour, sound)
133 min., loop
courtesy farbfilm verleih GmbH