As part of the exhibition Katerina Poladjan, Henning Fritsch. Ancora un dialogo di Roma, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) presents a screening of Il dialogo di Roma (1982) by the writer and director Marguerite Duras (1914–1996). The film interweaves views of the city of Rome with an off-screen dialogue. A woman and a man speak about the city, love, and life. Their conversation turns to the power of images and the potential of artistic creation, and offers a critical reflection on social constraints and the role of women.

Conceived as an “over-writing” of Marguerite Duras’s film, Ancora un dialogo di Roma (2025) offers contemporary views of Rome while an off-screen voice reconstructs fragments of memory: an arrival in a indeterminate space of possibility and an imagined childhood in Ostia. As in Duras’s model, the narration retains the intimacy of lived experience; the images explore the city beyond postcard motifs, shifting between the beautiful and the uninhabitable, and unsettling simple oppositions of “own” and “other.”

In conversation with Jörn Schafaff, Poladjan and Fritsch discuss the significance of Duras’s film for the development of Ancora un dialogo di Roma. Their discussion considers the experience of filmmaking in relation to writing – and artistic approaches to authenticity, identity, and memory.

Visitors are encouraged to see the exhibition Katerina Poladjan, Henning Fritsch. Ancora un dialogo di Roma in advance.

Free admission

Participants

Katerina Poladjan (*1971 in Moscow) has lived in Germany since 1979 and writes novels, essays, and plays. Her debut novel, In einer Nacht, woanders (2011), and Vielleicht Marseille (2015) were published by Rowohlt; Hier sind Löwen (2019) and Zukunftsmusik (2022) by S. Fischer. An adaptation of Zukunftsmusik will premiere at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater in January 2026. Poladjan has received numerous awards, including the German Literature Fund Grand Prize (2025); Trophée Littéraire des Nouvelles d’Arménie (2024); Rheingau Literaturpreis (2022); Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2022); and the Nelly Sachs Prize (2021). She has been nominated for the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize (2022), the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2022), and the German Book Prize (2019). Her new novel Goldstrand will be published in August 2025.

Henning Fritsch (*1972 in Kassel) is a director, author, and freelance editor. He studied German language and literature, theater studies, and philosophy in Cologne and Berlin. He worked as an assistant director at the Staatstheater Kassel, staged several off-theater productions, and founded the Sophiensæle Jugendbewegung in Berlin. He has been a guest lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts, the Literary Colloquium Berlin, and the Bavarian Academy of Writing in Munich.

Jörn Schafaff (*1970 in Hamburg) lives in Berlin and is an art historian, author, and curator. In 2024 he served as curatorial advisor for Rirkrit Tiravanija’s retrospective Das Glück ist nicht immer lustig at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. In 2023 he curated the exhibition Vielheit. Geschichten aus der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft at Kunst Meran. He cofounded the study program Cultures of the Curatorial in Leipzig, was a visiting professor of media theory and history at the HfK Bremen, and teaches regularly at universities in Germany and abroad. His publications include monographs on Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno; edited volumes such as Sowohl als auch dazwischen: Erfahrungsräume der Kunst (Wilhelm Fink, 2015) and Timing – On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (Sternberg Press, 2014); as well as the glossary Kunst↔Begriffe der Gegenwart. Von Allegorie bis Zip (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013).