Maria Binder

Trans X Istanbul

Maria Binder

Thousands of Trans*Women live in the big cities of Turkey. There has been an increase in the murder of Trans*. Crimes against Trans*Women are mostly not investigated. The perpetrators can usually rely on being exempted from prosecution. Ebru, a Trans*Woman from Istanbul, fights against the displacement and murder of her companions. She has experienced exclusion from state, society and family in her own life. For 25 years she has been active for LGBTQI rights. She wants to change Turkish society with humor, self-irony and political acumen. She meets Margarethe, a 85-year-old German retired nurse and mother of the film-maker, and establishes with her an old age home for Trans*. Urban transformation of Istanbul and the protests around the Gezi Park resonate throughout the film.

May Ayim: Hoffnung im Herz

Maria Binder

May Ayim, Sabine Härtling

The film presents a portrait by Maria Binder of May Ayim, Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political activist. May Ayim was one of the founders of the Black German Movement, and her research on the history and present situation of Afro-Germans, but also her political poetry, made her known in Germany and in other countries. May Ayim wrote in the tradition of oral poetry and felt a strong connection to other Black poets of the diaspora. Poetry gave her an opportunity to confront the white German society with its own prejudices. The film shows the author in performances in South Africa and in Germany. Interviews and poems reveal the search for identity, how and why the term Afro-German was introduced and how a young Black woman experienced the German unification. May Ayim lived from 1960 to 1996. In Berlin, a street which had the name of a colonialist was renamed in 2010 after May Ayim.

Trans*BUT — Fragments of Identity

Maria Binder

Ebru Kırancı

Fragmentary perspectives on Human Rights and transgender (trans*) People in Turkey. What remains at the place where a murder happened? What constitutes trans* life? How to cope with daily violence and hatred? We begin to search for traces. We follow the tracks of resistance and survival. We are collectors of the expelled. We gather fragments of trans* lives inspired by texts of Nazim Hikmet, Foucault, Benjamin and Zeki Müren. Trans*BUT is a documental research study driven by the question: “What keeps you going when all else falls away?”