LK: Ibrahim, how did you come to choose your university, and how was your experience there?

IBRAHIM SHADDAD: I left Sudan on a scholarship from the DAAD to study agriculture at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. Before leaving Sudan I wanted to be a lawyer. I thought lawyers defend the people. Then I said: “Why not agriculture?” The problem of Sudan is agriculture. This would be very beneficial, but I realized that agriculture is very much bound by economics. So I went to the Freie Universität in Berlin to study economics. I realized that economics is not the boss. There is something called political science. So I joined this faculty. Then I realized that they are all good, but this is not my inner wish. They don’t talk to the people. I thought: “Art is agriculture, art is everything, life is art. So why not study art?” I used to love cinema when I was in Sudan, but I never imagined that I would study cinema. While in Berlin, I found out that there was a film university in the East [the German Academy of Film Art]. Even though I was in West Berlin I managed somehow to send them my application. They have an examination before entering the school. First they asked me to write a critique of an East German film. Then they asked me to come to the exam. I sat in a room full of German students. A teacher came with a piccolo and played a tune. Someone else said: “Write the tune you heard.” Mamma mia. I’d never heard a tune like this. The German students were scribbling on their music sheets and I didn’t write anything. Then the next exam was about drawing. I thought I can draw, but all the other students were like Rembrandt. When they accepted me I wondered why? Did they accept me because everything this Black guy will learn will be beneficial to his country? Ten were accepted, only two were foreigners, and the rest Germans. My time at the school was the most lovely time I’ve spent in all my life. It’s very strange. When people asked me about my nationality I used to say German because I really felt like a German, a Black German. I was very much involved in German society, I spent all my time with the German people.

EM: I’ve loved cinema since I was in high school. In the late 1960s there was a Sudanese Cinema Club, where I used to attend the screenings. After high school, I decided to study cinema in Egypt since it was close to Sudan and the tuition was affordable. So I applied to the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo, knowing also that Cairo is a big city, and one can encounter and learn about different cinema schools from all over the world. There were several cultural centers that screened films, and there was also the Egyptian Film Critics Association. I got accepted and started learning more about cinema, not only from the institute, but also from the screenings and readings. In my graduation project I thought about going to Sudan, but there was no cinema industry in Sudan as such, so I wanted to use this opportunity and make a film based on a Sudanese story in Cairo. I managed to do this in Al Dhareeh (The Tomb). After graduation I came back and worked in the Film Production Administration, and two years later I was moved to the Cinema Section of the Department of Culture, where I met Ibrahim and Suliman, and we became friends until today.

LK: Then you left Sudan again. How long did you stay away?

EM: After the RCC (Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation) coup d’état in 1989, I traveled to Jeddah and worked in the ART TV Station [Arab Radio and Television Network] from 1996 until 2004. This was an opportunity to learn about TV production and its technologies. But I used to come to Sudan to meet Suliman, Manar, and the other colleagues. Ibrahim was in Cairo and then left for Canada, so we used to write to each other and sometimes talk on the phone.

LK: Ibrahim, how did you experience this time, and how were you in touch with the others?

IS: Suliman and I were dismissed from the State Corporation for Cinema. Then we were interrogated and detained by the secret service. It was a reason to leave Sudan because at that time it was very difficult for everybody. The nearest place was Cairo. I stayed there for five, six years. Then I went as a refugee to Canada where I stayed around 15 years. I got Canadian nationality. In Egypt I started to work on two films. One of them was a short film about the old Sudanese generation who lived in Egypt. The other film was a long feature based on an Egyptian story. But I didn’t get the money to do it. After leaving Cairo, I worked most of the time in the theater in Canada. I also did workshops on videomaking beginning in the 2000s, and made a short film about the Canadian oil drilling companies working in Sudan. I also wrote a play which was staged in a Canadian theater. I went back to Sudan because of my mother. I didn’t want to at first, but I came. I came here and I got stuck, since my friends are here.