Programme

_09.00_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Große Bühne

Readings for pupils
“Facing the Lion – Growing up as a Maasai on the African Savannah" by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton (Kenya), an autobiographical account, gives readers an insight into the fascinating culture of the Maasai and into growing up as a nomad child in the Kenyan savannah. He tells of his time in a missionary school, of his confrontation with modern technology and his alienating arrival in the USA, where he studied economics and politics and was a sociology teacher. His central themes revolve around his commitment to non-profit organisations and his political activities as a representative of the Kenyan parliament, as well as the developments in a globalised world.
In English. School years: 10-13
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_09.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Readings for pupils
It’s the last day of the summer holidays, Garmann’s great aunts are visiting, and the air is turning autumnal. Tomorrow, school starts again. And Garmann is scared. While he waits for his first tooth to finally fall out, he philosophises with his aunts about fear and courage, about false teeth, bobble hats and skateboards. Stian Hole (Norway) will present his picture book “Garmanns sommer“ (t: Garmann’s Summer) – a story in pictures and text which tells of something which is about to end, and something which is about to start.
School years: 2-4
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_09.30_children and young adults
Weinmeisterhaus

Writing workshop with Mats Wahl (Sweden)
Workshops for pupils
Mats Wahl, who worked for many years with young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, will develop exciting texts with a school class.
In German. School years: 1x 8-10
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_10.00_children and young adults
Jugendkulturzentrum Pumpe

Readings for pupils
Chiara is going to the seaside, just like every summer. But this year, nothing is like it was before. Because Chiara is now thirteen and somehow the world just feels different: the good-looking pool attendant there, her friend Ludovica here, who is already becoming a real woman, and then there are the younger children who Chiara looks after as if she was their mother… While searching for herself, Chiara has to deal with unusual feelings and thoughts. Growing up isn’t all that easy… Beatrice Masini (Italy) will read from her novel “L’Estate gigante“ (t: Giant Summer).
School years: 6/7
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_10.00_children and young adults
Labyrinth Kindermuseum Berlin

It was dark and eerily quiet. Artistic workshop around Einar Turkowski‘s (Germany) children‘s book
Workshops for pupils
A man on his boat lands on a sandbank, ties it up with strange equipment, ropes and stakes, and moves into an old house on the dunes. The inhabitants of the town are wary of the unusual stranger and watch him suspiciously. When they establish that he is a cloud-fisher and uses his equipment to catch clouds and cause them to rain down splendid fish that they too would like to possess, they decide to find out his secret. Einar Turkowski‘s richly detailed children‘s book talks of human feelings such as envy, anger and hatred, as well as interaction with others. The reader encounters strange machines and grotesque-seeming techno-creatures in the plot, told through black and white pencil drawings.
During the project, children will study the other and the unknown, will learn how to express alternative points of view and possible behaviour through drawings, and develop ideas for unusual technological equipment, machines and utility objects.
Project dates: 25.09. / 29.09.2008, both 09.00-13.00.
Today: meeting with Einar Turkowski
Led by: Katrin Arnold (Universität der Künste), Sandra Vollus (Labyrinth Kindermuseum Berlin)
Participation in the 3-day project: 8 € per child. School years: 1x 4-6
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_10.30_children and young adults
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin | Gemäldegalerie

The Sleeping Stoat. With Xosé Antonio Neira Cruz (Spain)
Workshops for pupils
His passion for the Italian Renaissance, for the works of Old Masters, for music and architecture inspired Xosé Antonio Neira Cruz to write his historical young person’s novel “O armiño dorme“ (2003) (t: The sleeping stoat). In diary form, the author tells the story of Bianca de Medici – the illegitimate child of the Florentine dynasty – and takes an undistorted look at the hard life that women led in the 16th century. With enlightening references to art – taking a painting by Bronzino, who was court artist to the Medici from 1533 onwards, as starting point – the author illustrates the thoughts, wishes and hopes of his young heroine, the secret daughter of Duke Cosimo I of Florence, who one day turns up at his court.
What does “Renaissance” actually mean? How did the sensational rise of Florence come about? And what part did the Medicis play in this? After a reading by the Galitian author, the young audience will set out to look for traces of the famous and notorious Medici clan during a voyage of discovery to 15th and 16th century Florence. Together with the author and a museum instructor, and using various paintings, they will find out what people of that time found beautiful and how they lived.
School years: 8-10
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_10.30_children and young adults
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin | Ethnologisches Museum

Please Frog, Just one Sip! A creative workshop with Piet Grobler (South Africa)
Workshops for pupils
With “Please Frog, Just one Sip!“ Piet Grobler has a whole load of exotic animals up his sleeve. On a hot day on the savannah, a thirsty frog takes a big sip from a watering hole, drinking all the water up. The other animals aren’t too pleased and try every trick in the book to get him to spit out the precious liquid. But that isn't easy: the lion tries to scratch the bloated frog, the chameleon tries to bribe him with tasty flies. Only the clever eels have an ingenious idea...
“Please Frog, Just one Sip!“ is the South African version of an Australian aboriginal dream-story. This picture book, along with other fantastic animal stories by Grobler, constitutes the starting point for an active workshop with the illustrator in the Africa and South Pacific exhibition sections of the Ethnological Museum, in which children approach the different species of animal, such as frog, lion, crocodile, elephant or chameleon through pantomime and onomatopoeitic acrobatics.
In English. School years: 1x 1-3
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_11.00_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer

Readings for pupils
Meg Rosoff (USA/UK) will read from her new novel “What I Was“. In 1962, the sixteen-year-old Hilary’s parents have sent her to a boarding school in eastern England. The rooms are bare, the food is repulsive, and the classmates sadistic. During one of the regular trips to the coast, Hilary meets Finn who wears clothes that look like they’ve come from the last century and who lives alone with his cat in a fisherman’s hut on the coast. The two become friends. But the idyll doesn’t last long, and Hilary must realise that nothing is as it seems.
In English. School years: 12/13
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_11.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Readings for pupils
Malorie Blackman (UK) will read from her novel “Noughts and Crosses”: Callum is a Zero – a second-class citizen in a world in which Alphas have all the authority. Sephy is an Alpha and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. Since early childhood, Callum and Sephy have been friends. And out of friendship has sprung love. Callum is white. Sephy is black. The world around them is sinking into prejudice, hate, violence and fear. And their love is putting them in terrible danger.
School years: 9-11
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_13.30_children and young adults
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Readings for pupils
Natalka Sniadanko’s (Ukraine) novel “Collection of Passions” has cult status in Ukraine. The story, tinged with traces of the author’s autobiography, tells of the emotional surges that the young Oljessa experiences in a fresh tone and with satirical cadence. Both curious and headstrong, the adolescent explores the possibilities that life opens up to her.
School years: 11-13
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_14.00_children and young adults
Weinmeisterhaus

Of inventing and constructing. Creative-Project around Einar Turkowski‘s (Germany) picture book
Workshops for pupils
As part of a project, in September 2008, a year 5 class of the Heinrich Schliemann Oberschule will study Turkowski‘s picture book "Es war finster und merkwürdig still" (t: It was dark and eerily quiet). The graphic artist Pura Kauf will invent and draw fantastic pieces of technological equipment, lends a new sense to everyday objects and develops instructions for use for old machines; the photographer Frank Kowallik discoveres technicalities with camera and computer, a constructor develops the technical side of things and gets drilling, screwing, sweating, building, cutting and sticking. Together with the young audience, literature, language, graphics, paintings, photography and new media are combined with each other in a variety of ways.
Today: meeting with Einar Turkowski
Closed event. Led by: Pura Kauf and Frank Kowallik
Closed event. Registration required under Tel. 0049-30-27 87 86 66

_16.00_Focus Africa
JVA Moabit

Wilfried N'Sondé (Congo/Germany). Reading and discussion (German and French)
Presented by: Martin Jankowski
Wilfried N’Sondé will give a reading in the Moabit Prison, in which most prisoners are on remand. N’Sondé is a native of Brazzaville, the capital of the present-day Republic of Congo, but moved to the suburbs of Paris with his family when he was five. He will read from his début novel “Le coeur des enfants léopards”. He speaks of the identity crisis of a young African immigrant in Paris. This event will take place in French and German and will be accompanied by the prison music group.
Closed event
In cooperation with the JVA Moabit and Berliner Literarische Aktion e.V.

_18.00_reflections
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer

Stadtwelt_Weltstadt: Kairo. Omar Akbar (Germany), Alaa al-Aswani (Egypt)
Cairo, the biggest city of the Arab world, has been considered for centuries to be a cosmopolitan, open-minded city. Its tolerant climate first changed around the end of the seventies. The moral concepts of the Islamists have come to dominate vast amounts of the public space. The author of the “Yakoubian Building” will be talking with the director of Bauhaus, Omar Akbar, about the past and future of this Egyptian megacity.
In cooperation with the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau

_19.00_specials
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Große Bühne

An evening with Angela Winkler
During a poetic evening with songs and texts – by Else Lasker-Schüler, Ingeborg Bachmann, Shakespeare, Weill, Eisler, Schönberg and “Barbara”, among others – Angela Winkler constantly morphs into new stage characters. She will be accompanied by Jörg Daniel Heinzmann on piano and Dragan Radosavievich on violin.
Angela Winkler is an eminent, internationally recognised German actress. She has played main roles in many key works of the New German Film movement, with directors such as Volker Schlöndorff (“The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum”, “The Tin Drum”), Margarethe von Trotha (“Sheer Madness”) and Reinhard Hauff (“Knife in the Head”). In addition, she has worked with influential theatre directors: Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber, Robert Wilson, Luc Bondy and Peter Zadek, who gave her the role of Hamlet. She can currently be seen in the Berlin Ensemble, playing Jenny in Robert Wilson’s production of “The Threepenny Opera”.

_19.00_Focus Africa
Literaturhaus | Großer Saal

Kenya today. A meeting with Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton (Kenya)
Presented by: Juliane Kippenberger
Having grown up in a nomadic village, Lekuton, a native inhabitant of the Massai, was the only member of his family to go to school, and studied economics and government as well as administration in the USA. Even early on in his life, Lekuton started to be active in NGOs, working to improve rural infrastructure in Kenya. He has had a seat in the Kenyan parliament since 2006. Through talking to Juliane Kippenberger of Human Rights Watch, the author of the book for young people “Facing the Lion” gives insights into Kenya’s multi-ethnic society, will discuss the recent political developments since the presidential elections of late 2007 and outlines the challenges the Kenyan civil society is facing.
Entry: 6/5/4 €. (Online-)ticket presales at www.berlinerfestspiele.de (available immediately) as well as (from 01.09.2008) on Tel. (030) 254 89 100

_19.00_speak, memory
Villa Oppenheim

Yvonne Vera: Souls in exile
Introduction: Flora Veit-Wild
Reader: Tatiana Nekrasov
The images produced by Yvonne Vera (Rhodesia [present-day Zimbabwe] 1964-2005) in her short stories provide an insight into the longing of the “Souls in Exile”. The stories tell of the country that Vera left and that nevertheless never left her. They deal with the themes of Zimbabwe and its inhabitants: with the armed struggle for independence, her life and all its violent alterations, and the connection with the red earth and her forefathers. Yvonne Vera was a member of the jury from 2001-2004 in the programme section “Literatures of the World” at the international literature festival berlin.

_19.00_children and young adults
Schiller-Theater-Werkstatt im GRIPS Theater

Conversations with young people… With Malorie Blackman (UK) and Veronika Rotfuß (Germany)
After school and at the weekend
In cooperation with the BLI BerlinerLiteraturenitiative / BerlinerLeseratten
The young “literature critics” of the BLI will meet Malorie Blackman and Veronika Rotfuß, authors of books for young people, who will present their recent works in readings and discussions. In “Noughts and Crosses”, the British author recounts the love between Sephy and Callum, who are growing up in a world divided by skin colour and which is sinking into prejudice, hate, violence and fear. For “Mücke“, the 15-year-old protagonist of the German author‘s debut novel “Mücke im März“ (t: Midge in March), everyday life is not always easy, divided as it is between school, friends, first love and her mother’s illness – sometimes, though, it is full of moments of happiness. Young members of the BLI will lead and present the meeting and will bring to bear their experience as members of the jury for the German Prize for Youth Literature and as participants of the “literary school quartet”.
For those over 13 years of age. Entry: 5 € (Theater der Schulen 4 €). Pre-sale tickets: Tel. (030) 39 74 74 77

_19.00_kaleidoscope
JVA Hakenfelde

Kiran Nagarkar (India)
Presented by: Martin Jankowski
As part of the “Literature behind bars” programme, Kiran Nagarkar – who has been awarded the foremost Indian literary prize, the Sahitya Academi Award – will read from his novels, which have become popular internationally, in the Hakenfelde prison, a male-only institution. The author, who was born in 1942 in Mumbai, writes in both Marathi and English. His novels “Saat Sakkam Trechalis” and “God’s Little Soldier” came out in Germany in 2007 and 2006.
Closed event
In cooperation with the JVA Hakenfelde and Berliner Literarische Aktion e.V.

_19.30_kaleidoscope
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer

Sjón (Iceland) – Prose reading
Presented by: Marita Meyer
Reader: Frank Arnold
The multi-facetted artist will read from his award winning novel “Skugga-Baldur”. Flitting in the border area between poetry and prose, and against a background of spectacular Icelandic landscapes, various elaborately interwoven plot strands and motifs from Iceland‘s folklore are played out, portraying the fateful involvement of a fox-hunting country priest in the nineteenth century in the life and death of a girl with Down’s Syndrome, who has sought refuge with a natural scientist.

_19.30_reflections
Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Beletage

More than art: Writers and their public responsibility
Presented by: Barbara Wahlster
Are writers obligated to intervene in society, to criticise or at least comment on it? Should the artistic process serve as a place of retreat, and is the written word intrinsically effective? Do the African literati have privileged methods of exerting social influence? How can they comment on society’s problem areas, values and conflicts against the mainstream? Have such ways of exerting influence long since been globalised?
Nuruddin Farah (Somalia/South Africa), Helon Habila (Nigeria/USA), Susan Kiguli (Uganda) and Boualem Sansal (Algeria) will be discussing the possibilities and limits of public involvement.
In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Free entrance

_19.30_reflections
Institut français

What European image culture? Philippe Descola and Hans Belting in conversation
Presented by: Jean d'Haussonville
This autumn, the Institut Français is celebrating the French presidency of the E.U. with Franco-German dialogues. Since 2001 Philippe Descola has occupied the chair of nature anthropology at the Collège de France; the work of Hans Belting, a major contemporary art historian, often morphs into an anthropology of images.
Part of the Franco-German Dialogues

_20.00_reflections
Max Liebermann Haus

Young International Writing: Laila Lalami (Morocco/USA), Rattawut Lapcharoensap (Thailand/USA), Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa), Owen Sheers (UK)
Presented by: Marie Neumüllers
What affects the young authors of today? What do they write about and for whom, and under what conditions? And what difference does nationality make? Is it easier for a young, male British author than for an up-and-coming female author from South Africa? What inspires younger writers to live and work abroad? Four young, international authors contribute their views.
In cooperation with the Foundation Brandenburger Tor
Free entrance

_20.30_kaleidoscope
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Marie NDiaye (France)
Presented by: Angela Spizig
Reader: Marie Löcker
The author, who was awarded the Prix Fémina, among others, first stormed the French bestseller list with her début novel at the age of 17. She will be reading from her latest novel, “Mon coeur à l'étroit”. The novel tells the story of the married couple Nadja and Ange, both dedicated elementary school teachers in Bordeaux. Their once trusted surroundings become foreign and threatening – which has consequences for both them and their relationship.

_21.00_speak, memory
Villa Oppenheim

Dambudzo Marechera: The House of Hunger
Introduction: Flora Veit-Wild
Reader: Astrid Gorvin
“I got my things and left“ – what the nameless character in Marechera’s “The House of Hunger“ left behind and continues to leave behind can perhaps be called a place of hunger, a hunger for the country that, since colonialism, no longer exists. In this way, Marechera’s (Rhodesia [present-day Zimbabwe]; 1952-1987) first book can be read as a metaphor for the fight for Zimbabwean independence. A fight that cannot be related in normal prose, but demands its own style.

_21.00_kaleidoscope
Literaturhaus | Großer Saal

Chingiz Abdullayev (Azerbaijan)
Presented by: Matthias Schwartz
Reader: Adnan Maral
Abdullayev’s first novel “Blue Angel” became a victim of Soviet censorship in 1985. It could only be published in 1988 and became a literal overnight success. Abdullayev became known in the following years as an author of novels about the secret service and crime. The hero of most of his crime novels is Drongo – a character who lacks both nationality and name. Questioned as to the secret of his success, Chingis Abdullayev answers, “I write the truth”.
Part of the culture programme of Azerbaijan Year in Germany 2008

_21.15_kaleidoscope
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer

Lucette ter Borg (Netherlands)
Presented by: Inge Zenker-Baltes
At the age of 76 the farm manager Landewee decides to leave his native Germany to start a new life in the Canadian wilderness. He only packs the most vital articles: clothing, books, rifles, records – and the Bechstein piano from his departed wife. In her début work "He cadeau uit Berlijn" Lucette ter Borg narrates the story of a family, their secrets, their loves and of the temptations of self illusion – all underlined by the magic of music.

_21:45_kaleidoscope
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Sherko Fatah (Germany)
Presented by: Wilfried F. Schoeller
“Whoever wants to know what destiny is should read this book”, wrote Jens Jenssen delightedly about Fatah’s novel, “Das dunkle Schiff”, (2008) in “Die Zeit”. Fatah tells of the young Iraqi Kurd, Kerim, who grew up under the rule of Saddam and joined the Islamist jihadists before fleeing them and making his way to Berlin. It is an impressive story about the strangeness that Fatah develops through his quiet, precise style, extreme vigilance and savvy, shunning both snap judgements and common prejudices.