Monday, January 10, Kirill Serebrennikov arrived Hamburg (Germany) and is directing now rehearsals of Chekhov’s “The Black Monk” at the Thalia Theater. The director was surprisingly allowed to leave after he was convicted of fraud in Summer 2020 and sentenced with a three-year travel ban. Since then he conducted rehearsals throughout Europe only by video conference.
Source: Deutsche Welle
The Taliban has admitted to the killing of the famous comic Nazar Mohammad, known as Khasha Zwan, in the country’s southern region. Khasha, who earlier served in the Kandahar police, was picked up by from his home in southern Kandahar and shot dead. A a video, widely shared on social media, showed Khasha getting slapped and abused while he was held by two men in a car. Nazar Mohammad’s body, shot multiple times, was found in Kandahar end of July.
Sources: Human Rights Watch, Independent , RTA World (Video via Twitter), Aljazeera
The Moscow city department of culture will not renew Kirill Serebrennikov’s contract as the director of the Gogol Center. The contract ends on February 28. Serebrennikov was appointed as director of the Gogol Theater in 2012 and reopened the venue 2014 as the Gogol Center. The Serebrennikov case started in May 2017, when the Center was raided by the Russian Investigative Committee, followed by a “theatre trial” over 3 years (see also our several posts).
Source: Moscow Times
The Central Khartoum Primary Court issued a verdict against five young artists to two months imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 SDG (equivalent of 90,9 USD). On August 10th, neighbors of Civic Lab network, an organization in Khartoum where rehearsal of a play was taking place, complained about too much noise. The complaint increased to physical attacks to the artists and the staff of the Civic Lab. When the police arrived they arrested the artists and did not stop the neighbors to beat them with sticks and to throw stones at them.
The artists are: Duaa Tarig Mohamed Ahmed (Program and Office Manage), Abdel Rahman Mohamed Hamdan, Ayman Khalaf Allah Mohamed Ahmed, Ahmed Elsadig Ahmed Hammad, Hajooj Mohamed Haj Omar (aka Hajooj Kuka, awarded filmmaker). These artists have spent the last two years creating art to support Sudan’s quest for freedom and democracy. They have created hundreds of murals and films in the public service, supported the Prime Minister’s office and Sudan National Television, and conducted hundreds of civic engagement workshops across Sudan through their work at the Civic Lab network.
Duaa, along with 4 of her colleagues were charged separately while another 6 artists are awaiting a verdict on Sunday 20th September. The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africe (SIHA) is extremliy concerned that “The legal framework, legal procedures and the articles of the law itself are designed to criminalise and prosecute civilians, particularly women and minorities. Women and activists are still an active target of the law enforcement in Sudan, and the criminalisation of women is legally enabled.”
ACAR states that artists are at the vanguard of positive change in Sudan. They have to be protected from violent mobs. The civilian led government has to to investigate the judges and police involved in this case.
Sources: Press release from SIHA network, Durban FilmMart Institute, Gisa Media
Security officials in Bagdad announced today, that German curator Hella Mewis was released at 6:25 a.m. (03.25 UTC/GMT) in a security operation at Rusafa, eastern part of Baghdad. Iraqi authorities did not give any information about who was behind the kidnapping. No one was arrested during the operation.
Hella is presently under the protection of the German embassy in Baghdad. She is already the sixth foreigner to be abducted in the Iraqi capital this year and dozens of activists have been kidnapped in recent months.
Sources: Deutsche Welle, The Arab Weekly, Neue Züricher Zeitung (German)
The cultural manager and curator Hella Mewis has been active in German-Iraqi cultural exchange for many years. At the Berlin based network for cultural reconstruction in Iraq, she was involved in numerous initiatives and projects that were intended to enable the Iraqi cultural scene to join the international cultural exchange after decades of isolation through war and terror. Some of these could also be realized with the help of the ITI. Since 2012 she continued her work from Baghdad. She built up the cultural centre “Beit Tarkib” under the most difficult conditions and got support by the Goethe-Institut for festivals, concerts, readings, workshops and exhibitions.
Hella was, as usual, travelling by bicycle when she was kidnapped by armed men from two cars near the cultural centre in the evening of July 20. It is speculated that the perpetrators are close to the Hezbollah militia. The German Foreign Office has set up a crisis management team. Media and networks are following the case. #hellamewis, #freehella
Sources: AFP Germany (Video), Euronews, The Art Newspaper, Associated Press, New York Times, Neue Zuericher Zeitung (German), Sueddeutsche Zeitung (German)