What is it like to go to the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring to set up a film studies department at a German-Jordanian university? Living and working in a crisis-ridden region where all neighbouring countries are burning, bombs are falling a few dozen kilometres away, refugees can no longer find peace and more and more nations are being drawn into the conflicts?
Jordan seems to have escaped unscathed from this all these years. The country is in the eye of the hurricane, while all around it storms and rages. The civil war in Syria, the war against IS in Iraq, the permanent Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the unrest in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the Wahhabi and extremely restrictive Saudi Arabia.
What are the issues that concern the local people, what do the students deal with, what stories can be told and how are the cultural differences between Germany and Jordan expressed, – between democracy and absolute monarchy, – between open society and tribal culture? What effects this field of tension has on the work directly, but also what filmic content results from it, will be presented and supplemented with film clips.

 

Servet Ahmet Golbol, film director and author, was born in Antakya, Turkey. He grew up in South Germany. At the Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz he first studied film science, American and English studies. Later he started to study film and video at the Academy of Arts at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University where he graduated as Master of Arts with the short film “An Eve” (“A letter for Eve”). At the same time he wrote plays for Disney, Germany and Warner, Germany and worked as editor for different productions.
He had a scholarship for external studies in Los Angeles. (Topic; architecture and film). The Johannes-Gutenberg-University exposed his works on exhibitions in Mainz, Germany and in Los Angeles, USA (e.g. his prize winning short film “25 fps” and the documentary sequel “Rapid Eye of Los Angeles”).
He continued his academic education as a postgraduate at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany with the basic subjects directing and screenwriting. There he graduated as Master of Arts with the screenplay for the long feature film “Saras Lied” (“Sara’s Song”).
In 2000 he moved to Berlin where he worked as 1st assistant director for several cinema and television productions. Among which „Absurdistan“ and „Two half Lives“ were multiple award winning.
In 2006 he founded the IMPALA filmproduction with his partner Nathalie Arnegger. From 2010 – 2013 he worked as a professor for film at the IMD (Department for Intermedia Design) at the Hochschule Trier.
He is a constant visiting professor at the International Forum of History and Arts which annually takes place in another country in Europe.
From 2013 – 2017 he was sent by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to the German-Jordanian University in Amman / Jordan to establish a degree programs in filmmaking and to teach in all relevant fields.