The new year 2017 is now almost two month old and at this point it’s most of the times worth to look back. The year 2016 was also the first 12 month of CINEMA WITHOUT BORDERS with lots of ups and some downs or better said some new, informative experiences.

At the beginning of the year everyone in our team was very suprised, but also pleased about the high attendance at our first events. This idea did obviously not only fascinate us, but as well several other like-minded people in Karlsruhe and the camps. Based on the throughout positive feedback we set the goal to expand our project or at least make it to an established monthly cultural event. To reach new potential visitors you have to break sometimes new ground. Therefore we tried in February with the movie “Caramel” to organize an evening only for women playing with the thought to create an environment for women in the camps, which will motivate them to join our events and equalize our heavily maled dominated visitor numbers. At this point we also want to apologize if there were some misunderstanding or even discontent about our decision.

During summer time we decided to bring our project and the European Football Champoinship together by presenting one match at the cinema instead of a movie. Even though some people still might have some troubles with every aspect of the game, football is an universal language connecting people with different minds or diversed origins, which could be also seen at our event. Moreover we had our first screening “on the road” at the Eckkulturdörfle showing some short movies at the evening outside in the open air. Thanks again for the invitation and the possibility to make our project better known.

Due to the transfer of a high number of residents into surrounding camps, the demand for living space in the camps declined, so that the situation in the camps in Karlsruhe was changing gradually noticeable by a reduced number of residents or even full closures of some camps. This changing situation was also detectable by the lower numbers of visitors at our events each month. But for us it’s definitely not a bad signal, on the contrary it’s an even higher motivation for us to adapt our project to the new conditions.

The autumn respectively the October was packed with the planning and organization for a very exciting event, in particular the Halloween Double-Feature. Thanks to the enormous aid and cooperation from Cola Taxi Okay we could set up an interesting evening in a vampire theme. Beginning with the astonishing Persian movie “A girl walks home alone”, the evening entered slowly but with very impressive black and white images the vampire world. Followed by the New Zealand vampire-comedy “What we do in the shadows” it reached its cinemastic climax. Surrounded by some nice music and amazing decoration we talked and danced together until the morning dawn before we all had to get back into the mortal world. The entire evening was a lot of fun for everyone in our team especially the unproblematic intercultural exchange late in the night.

The first year of Cinema without borders came to an end shortly before Christmas season with the German comedy “Soulkitchen” by Fatih Akin. We want to say thank you to everyone, who supported us in our first year in whatever manner as well as to everyone, who attended one of our evenings. Due to new granted support by the Monsignore-Ohlhäuser-Stiftung we will be able to provide this year an attractive, highly varied programm again. So just stay tuned and be surprised what you are going to experience with Cinema without borders this year!