Arabic, Kurdish with English subtitles

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 2 is the result of the artist’s extended stay in the women only village of Jinwar (meaning “women’s place/land”). Founded in 2016 in northeastern Syria by the Kurdish autonomous women’s movement, the settlement offers refuge to women. Arsanios presents their revolutionary life as a negotiation between self-governance and self-sufficiency, where stewardship of land is a manifestation of freedom, and its cultivation a political tool. The film shows examples of land distribution according to the principle of “usership not ownership” and emphasizes the importance of a non-anthropocentric approach in building alliances across the all-female community, flora, and fauna. By interweaving footage of everyday activities – sharing native herbs, assigning housing to new community members, and collectively using fields and local resources – with the offscreen voice of the cameraman, the work deconstructs the historically extractive and biased nature of the documentary format.

• Sektion Section: Artist in Focus. Marwa Arsanios
• Programm Programme: Programme 5