My Name is Not Ali (Jannat Ali)

His anti-racist film Ali – Fear Eats Soul (1973) gained German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder international acclaim. The protagonist, an Arab foreign worker, was played by Moroccan El Hedi Ben Salem M’barek Mohammed Mustafa, Fassbinder’s lover at that time. While the film itself courageously deals with the racism of post-war German society, its makers reproduced the insensibility and invention of the Other, fantasizing their own ‘Salem’. Collage-like, through interviews and archive material, My Name Is Not Ali uncovers the invention of El Hedi Ben Salem by the Fassbinder troupe, an image not revised by most of its members till today.

Viola Shafik, Egypt/Germany 2011, 93 min, HDCAM, German/Arabic/French with English ST
Viola Shafik director, writer, camera, sound | Doreen Ignaszewski editor, sound designer | Bassam Elelaimy sound editor | Ahmed Gaber sound mix | Noureddine Ben Redjeb voice over Ben Salem’s letters | Renate Leiffer research consultant | Majdi El-Omari dramaturgy consultant | Zazou Röver dramaturgy consultant | Onsi Abou Seif producer | Bärbel Mauch production consultant | Mathies van Eendenburg legal consultant | Andreas Duckert IT support | Maggie Morgan editing subtitles | trickWILK GmbH (Th. Wilk) DV transfer

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