“Rituals of Care” is an evening that gathers us around the quiet, insistently political work of tending to ourselves and to one another. Through intimate gestures and everyday rituals, we are invited to witness how care becomes a language of survival, a choreography of relation, and a practice of world-making in the midst of our current permacrisis. Foregrounding the lives, stories and experiences of African and Afro-diasporic protagonists in Berlin, the two films will form the basis of a Q&A and conversation with filmmaker Nnenna Onuoha.

“Wash Day” | dir. Nnenna Onuoha | HD, stereo and 5.1  | 27 mins | 2021 | English with German and English Subtitles

In “Wash Day”, three Afrodescendent women living in Berlin go through their wash day routines and rituals. As they care for their hair: choosing products, washing, detangling, braiding, cutting, dyeing etc. they discuss how their relationship to it has changed over the years.

“Rituals” | dir. Nnenna Onuoha & Edna Bonhomme | HD, stereo | 17 mins | 2020 | English with German Subtitles

Chronicling the care practices of three Black Berliners – Caritia, “a BDSM practitioner, domina and sex worker,” Lee a “gender-terrorist, yoga instructor” and Goitseone, “a pessimistic witch,” and “Twa Sana (Light of a New Moon)” rituals consists of a twenty-minute documentary video and a twelve-piece photo-series. In the video, describing their respective experiences as Black bodies in the German health care system, Lee, Caritia, and Goitseone also demonstrate some of the ways in which they find healing for themselves and for others outside.