Short Film Trailer
In the Golden Age, Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted harmoniously in Cordoba. Inspired by this unity, student groups from Hamburg, Shaar HaNegev, and Rahat planned a joint theater project. Unfortunately, the day of departure was the 7th of October.Only the Hamburg group could travel, while the others faced the onset of war. Out of the deep feeling of speechlessness and powerlessness this visual poem was created to convey the history, spirit and architecture of the city. This film serves as a sign of humanity. As a silent sign of hope – for the ruins of the present.
What begins in the film as a temporal document unfolds into a new spatial experience.
The exhibition expands upon the filmic work – continuing its themes, voices, and perspectives while opening them up to new encounters. Individual fragments, scenes, and thoughts from the film break free from their linear narrative and enter into an open dialogue with installation, moving image, and documentary elements.
The film thus becomes the starting point for a layered narrative space:
A place where images are allowed to linger.
A place that is not fixed, but remains in motion.
A place where memory, architecture, and hope meet again and again.
„[re]act finding memory“ Teaser
One year after October 7 and the outbreak of a war that seems without end, “Architecture of Hope” continues to stand for preserving spaces of encounter and hope.
What emerges is the simultaneity of different narratives, of horrific experiences and traumas. This is not about relativizing, denying, or comparing – but about understanding and accepting the coexistence of these collective and individual realities.
Within the framework of the program “[re]act – finding memory”, our participants set out in June 2024 to search for hope among the ruins of death in Auschwitz – a project that had been planned long before October 7 and independent of Architecture of Hope. But in light of what followed, the working title became all the more a guiding principle.
[re]act = to respond to the present, in the context of a past that reveals itself through finding memory
[re]act = to act – and also: [re]c = to record
Due to the escalation of the war in the Middle East and the rise in antisemitism in Europe, our Jewish participants were denied permission to travel to Poland by the Israeli Ministry of Education. As a result, our participants from Hamburg realized the project in Kraków together only with Arab/Palestinian Israelis.
In order to include the Jewish participants, project director Hèdi Bouden and filmmaker Jan Lewandowski traveled to Israel in August 2024 to work with both groups and incorporate their lived realities in Sha’ar HaNegev and Rahat. This made the concept of simultaneity even more tangible – and the meaning of our campaign and filmic engagement even more urgent in continuing to give hope.
One year after October 7, our journey does not end – on the contrary.
[re]act – finding memory leads us further into the past and brings us, in October 24 , to Andalusia and Morocco.
