YALLA YALLA ARABIA mit Lutz Jäkel
YALLA YALLA ARABIA - The Becoming and Passing of the Arabian Peninsula
AMUSING, SERIOUS, AND TOUCHING STORIES THAT DO NOT APPEAR IN THE NEWS
For many years, the writer Nadine Pungs and the photojournalist Lutz Jäkel have been traveling through the dazzling countries of the Arabian Peninsula. A region marked by negative headlines and stereotypes. In their award-winning live reportage, Pungs and Jäkel dispel these notions, telling stories of desert sorrow and climate change, of warmth and destruction, of becoming and passing.
The two travelers have always been on separate journeys, unaware of each other's whereabouts. While Lutz Jäkel marveled at the temple tombs of the rock city of Petra in Jordan, Nadine Pungs followed the footsteps of a famous orientalist traveler. While Jäkel conducted interviews with successful businesswomen in the United Arab Emirates, Pungs spoke with guest workers in Kuwait about precarious living conditions. In Bahrain, they experienced the sinful nightlife. Pungs independently explored Saudi Arabia for several months and met a prince, while Jäkel lived in Yemen, long before the war, traveling through the desert with drug dealers. Pungs stood at the border in Oman and looked into the country.
One day, they decide to embark together on one of the most exciting countries in the Middle East, where they had never been before: Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. But also a country that has endured decades of dictatorship, wars, and conflicts. Together, they visit magnificent Shiite shrines, talk to young Iraqis about their future, pass about forty military checkpoints, and watch the sun set in the Tigris river.
In the end, Nadine Pungs and Lutz Jäkel have collected amusing and touching stories and photographs from all countries of the Arabian Peninsula, stories that do not appear in the news. Because in the West, we know almost nothing about the tens of millions of people who live, dance, laugh, argue, and love on the peninsula.
Yalla Yalla - Arabic for: Let's go! Infotainment at its best.
Admission to the foyer from 6:45 pm