This summer we’re doing a couple of screenings at our main facility in Höja. The program will include art videos and films from Lebanon, Yugoslavia, France, Turkey, from the early 1970’s up to the present. We’ll continue introducing them here on the blog over the next week, so check back for more details. If you want to receive up-to-date emails about our activities, like info on screening dates, you can sign up here (Swedish) or here (English).

Photography: © CHROMA

Space Refugee by Halil Altindere is a film about the former Syrian cosmonaut Muhammed Ahmed Faris, who in 1987 with the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-3 went on a seven-day journey to the space station Mir. Today the former hero of the USSR and supporter of the democratic opposition movement against Assad lives as a refugee in Istanbul.

Photography: © CHROMA

“When in 2000 al-Assad died and his son Bashar succeeded him, Faris was the head of the Syrian Air Force Academy and a military advisor. To The Guardian, Faris describes both father and son as enemies of the people, who ruled by maintaining their population as uneducated and divided as possible. In 2011, when the revolution in Syria broke out, he marched in Damascus, calling for reform; the next year he defected to Turkey, becoming one of the five million Syrian refugees to leave the country.” – quoting Orit Gat, Art Agenda.

Photography: © CHROMA

The film is both a documentary about the life of Muhammed Ahmed Faris, and a proposal of outer space as a haven for displaced refugees. “I hope we can rebuild cities for them in space, where there is freedom and dignity and where there is no tyranny, no injustice” says Faris in the film. This idea is then explored through interviews with scientists discussing the practicalities of establishing a colony on Mars, illustrated with footage of Martian-looking landscapes and underground halls from the Cappadoccia region of Turkey.

Photography: © CHROMA

The film Space Refugee has previously been shown as part of an installation presented in a heroic Socialist Realist style, reminiscent of an old-fashioned space museum. The installation included a virtual reality video, which placed the viewers immersed in an alien landscape on Mars, as colonisers or refugees. More info on the exhibition presented at n.b.k. in Berlin can be found here>>

Photography: © CHROMA