Resilience

On the way

The Black Tarred Road

*Recommended listenting place for the Black Tarred Road: walking from spot #14 to spot # 37 and for Sweet: Spot #17 from this map of Frankfurt’s main Cemetery or while walking at any cemetery.

A voiced journey through a gallery of family photographs and the road where childhood friendships were formed, and a community of neighbors, friends, family, and elders supported each other in surviving apartheid.

Sweet

Khabeer portrays his memories of growing up in a Muslim neighborhood of Cape Town while reflecting on his connections to both India, the land of his ancestors, and (apartheid) South Africa, his homeland. He remembers the constant floods, which disproportionately affected communities of colour, but which also brought the sweetest fruits and brightest flowers the next season. This passage can be heard as a letter of gratefulness read aloud to his teachers and elders where he reflects on the lessons learned by walking the streets.

Buenos Aires of Bornheim

As Walter tells us in word and song of his early memories of learning to sing opera in Buenos Aires, his joys and struggles when he migrates to Italy and Germany, how singing saved him from deportation in a stuation of racial profiling and specially, how Buenos Aires, his hometown, overlaps with Bornheim, his home in Frankfurt am Main by his unique angentinization of Bornheim.

Winged Resilience

Film credits:

This is Khabeer’s first-ever filmmaking experience in which he juxtaposes images from the streets of Frankfurt am Main with excerpts from interviews he did of his (post)migrant colleagues from Daydreaming the Archive-Frankfurt am Main walking tour. He highlights the ways in which they overcome obstacles for being migrants and find joy, strength, and hope for themselves and their children, as pigeons do when they excel at surviving in dirty, urban environments.

Winged Resilience - Comments

Khabeer reflects on what birds have taught him: their chirping noises as an acceptance of every day’s challenges and new beginnings and, even their poop as a lesson to listen to what they are trying to say. He tells us of his journey with the Daydreaming family and within the project and his findings on the diverse reasons for people’s migration. Last but not least, he shares how pigeons, the often called dirty birds, have the ability to adapt to hostile living conditions in the city, which to him, is a testament to resilience.