Documenting Rights in Comedy and Documentaries

The Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" would like to honor its Artist in Residence Ali Samadi Ahadi on the occasion of his winning the renowned CIVIS Prize with an evening event on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. The award winning comedy "Salami Aleikum" will be screened in the Max Weber Lecture Room under the title "Documenting Rights in Comedy and Documentaries". The subsequent discussion, in which among others the WDR's commissioner for integration, Gualtiero Zambonini, will participate, offers the opportunity to pose questions to the artist regarding his work, in which a variety of narrative and aesthetic tools are employed to address issues of cultural conflict, struggle and the search for social aceptance. The CIVIS Media Prize which Ali Samadi Ahadi received together with Arne Noltig in the category of "Entertainment" is given yearly to the best programs on the topic of integration and cultural diversity in Europe.

Ali Samadi Ahadi, “Artist in Residence” for the research year “law and religion” (2012/12) is a multiple award winning director and screenwriter. Born in Tabris, Iran, he fled to Germany due to the first Gulf War at age 13. Following his Abitur in 1992, he studied social science, design for electronic media and visual communication in Hannover and Kassel.

In 2006, he was awarded the German Film Prize in the category “best documentary” for his work “Lost Children”, created together with Oliver Stoltz, documenting the fate of child soldiers in Uganda. In 2009, he received the German film critics’ prize in the category “best feature film debut” for his comedy “Salami Aleikum”. This movie also received the CIVIS Media Prize on May 9, 2012. For his documentary “Iran: Elections 2009”, Ali Samadi Ahadi received the Grimme Prize for Information & Culture 2011. An extended version of this documentary was screened in movie theaters under the title “The Green Wave”, was entered into the Sundance Film Festival and received numerous further awards at international film festivals in Prague, The Hague, Geneva and Washington.

At the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture”, Ali Samadi Ahadi is currently working on a movie on the Iranian Revolution of 1978/70.