Hang Nguyen

Unframed DDeRờ

“The vernacular use of the word history thus offers us a semantic ambiguity: an irreducible distinction and yet an equally irreducible overlap between what happened and that which is said to have happened.” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot)

In post-unification Germany in the 1990s, that what was said to have happened, the historical narratives of the sociohistorical process, served nation building, especially when it came to migration, and even more so when it came to migration to the GDR. Although the contract workers were part of what happened, their lived memories were not part of what was said to have happened.

Silencing as a form of exclusion expresses the ultimate power. It hides both the one who has power and those being subjected to it. Still, personal stories and memories were preserved through shared conversations and passed down through generations. They pierce through this cloak of invisibility, they demand to be recognized as part of the process through the resistance of the victim narrative. But most contract workers don’t see themselves as victims. They hold their memories with pride, they know how their story holds true to them despite the dominance of the institutional and cultural narratives. They realize their exclusion, but their memory has a value of its own.

This film wants to enrich what is said to have happened and to un-silence parts of their pasts, by collecting the fragments and getting a new understanding of how they relate.

Video, 2023