“GOD IS NOT DEAD!”
EUROPEAN/WORLD PREMIERE – Monday 8 October 2012 6:30
GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, CENTRE FOR CULTURAL STUDIES
THE FILM
Directed by young Turkish filmmaker Bahar Kılıç, “GOD IS NOT DEAD!” is a journey that cuts across the realms of music, politics and intercultural dialogue.
Shot in London, Berlin, Frankfurt and Istanbul, the documentary investigates European Muslims’ resistance against the epidemic of “Islamophobia” and their endeavour to transform the demonized visage of Islam in the West through music, creative expression, political activism and redefining the concept of “hybridity”.
The incredibly diverse stances, creative practices and routes of thinking displayed by the people in focus of “GOD IS NOT DEAD!” demonstrate a wealth that is unknown not only to the Western world who is prone to be infected by the virus of cultural exclusivist discourses but also to the Orient who’s suffering from amnesia.
“GOD IS NOT DEAD!” features exclusive interviews with and footage from Fun^Da^Mental and Aki Nawaz, The Kominas, Poetic Pilgrimage, Mecca2Medina, Mohammed Yahya, Nomadic Poet (The Planets), Quest Rah, Style Islam (Melih and Yeliz Kesmen), Sayfoudin (Germany) and Professor John Hutnyk (Goldsmiths, University of London).
THE EVENT
The European & World premiere of GOD IS NOT DEAD! will take place on October 8th, at Goldsmiths, University of London Centre for Cultural Studies.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A Session with the director, the creative staff and featured names.
The event is FREE OF CHARGE.
All free thinkers and “rebels with noble causes” are welcome to join us. New Academic Building LG02
(Goldsmiths NAB LG02 – that’s the big newish building on the hill behind the back field. Walk through the main building and up the path, and up the stairs beside the gym. In the door, and downstairs to the big auditorium. NAB LG02 New Academic Building LG02. See you there.)
Trinketization 
Directed by young Turkish filmmaker Bahar KILIÇ, GOD IS NOT DEAD (PUNK ISLAM) investigates the Muslim immigrants across Europe who employ the methods of Western-born musical styles, transforming the the demonized visage of Islam in the West.
Challenging and first of its kind in content and scope GOD IS NOT DEAD opens wide the gray area of thinking that seems to be forsaken after 9/11 and the spread of Islamophobia.
As of January 2010, Director Bahar Kılıç and her team have embarked on working on the documentary project GOD IS NOT DEAD (PUNK ISLAM) with the financial backing of ECF (European Cultural Foundation).
GOD IS NOT DEAD seeks to illuminate the stance of the Muslim immigrants in Europe employing the methodological wealth of musical/subcultural movements including but not limited to Punk.
The immigrants of Muslim origin, whose life styles and artistic production will be investigated by GOD IS NOT DEAD, especially after the epidemic of “Islamophobia” spreading following the terrorist attacks of September 11. In the face of increasing discrimination and demonisation, a part of the Muslim immigrants in the Western societies generated a new movement centered around music.
Revealing the extraordinary mélange of ideas and attitudes, GOD IS NOT DEAD sheds light on the transformation that is taking place in the suburbs of London, Berlin and Istanbul. The birth of a new subculture whose banner is raised by REBELS WITH NOBLE CAUSES.
The incredibly rich stances, creative practices, routes of thinking and inclinations displayed by the people in focus of GOD IS NOT DEAD demonstrate a wealth that is unknown not only to the Western world that is prone to be infected by the cultural exclusivist discourses and Islamophobia but also to the Orient who’s suffering from an amnesia that blocks ways of reevaluating its own heritage.
The first part of the shootings of the London leg of GOD IS NOT DEAD has been completed from 10 to 27 June, 2010. Director Bahar Kılıç and film crew have interviewed a wide range of names from the renegade band Fun Da Mental and frontman Aki Nawaz to popular hip hopsters Mecca2Medina, to academics such as Professor John Hutnyk (Goldsmiths, University of London) to Chris Bohn (Editor, The Wire Magazine).
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The initial source of inspiration that set me on motion for this project was the wideness and power of the “symbolic capital” of the Punk movement and its being employed as a means of expression by the Muslim immigrants across Europe and their raising their voices against discriminations through music and subculture, hence culminating in a concrete “cultural hybridity”.
As a subcultural and political movement bloomed in the Western societies in the 70s, Punk has continued to transform the aspects of cultural production and living even after the vanishing of its totality in the 70s. As a musical movement, Punk has invoked the spirit of iconoclasm and a deviance from the modus vivandi of the mainstream that verges on lauding self-destruction as a means to resist while it sculptured out a totally fresh outlook on “style” that complemented its inner “teaching”. The spirit of Punk still influences and oozes into a great array of musical styles and cultural movements.
In the face of increasing discrimination and demonization, a part of the Muslim immigrants in the Western societies generated a new movement centered around music. The music oriented subculture offers a barricade against both the discriminative gazes directed by and radical conversative/cultural preservationist discourses produced by certain groups of the Western societies these Muslim immigrants belong to and the political currents of oppressive/tyrannical radical Islamism whose visage drives “conservative” tendencies in Western societies to the brink of adopting discriminating outlooks on cultures of the so called “Islamic world” and more precisely, Muslim immigrants.
Offering a unique cultural formation that defies norms and boundaries defined by conservative/preservationist/essentialist cultural discourses and constructions, the perspective of “taqwacore” is of great interest to me also due to the fact that I am a citizen of the only Muslim country which went through a painful democratization process and has constantly been defined as the “crossroads” of Eastern and Western cultures
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