Me and my classmate Dimitra, worked on a film program that will be screened at the Smart project Space in Amsterdam. The event is FREE OF CHARGE and we are trying to put together enough audience to have a nice debate with the filmmakers who will participate to the screening (so far confirmed Antonio Guzman, Omid Pourhashemi).
it would be great if you all could add a post on facebook or spread the words through your contacts!
here below the program.
“Identity in Transit: a journey between borders”, tells the story of a passage. Six filmmakers, from Afghanistan, Panama, Argentina, Iran and USA, moved to The Netherlands. These artists use their experience and their multicultural background to represent the process of shaping an identity influenced by migration, Diaspora and transnationalism. Giving voice to a topic part of the personal experience of the artists also means believing that filmmaking can be used as a tool for self-interpretation and as a means to explore their own backgrounds and their identity.
“Identity in transit: a journey between borders”, will guide the audience on an imaginary journey that represents the act of leaving and returning to the homeland, put into practice by characters with different backgrounds. However, the focus is on the journey itself, on the spaces in-between, on the borders instead of on places of origin and destination and the effects of transnationalism upon individual lives.
The journey starts with the discovery of the borders of someone’s own environment and with the insecurity of crossing the borders (FREEZEFRAME). It continues with the decision of escaping from the poor conditions of a metropolis such as Jakarta, after the possibilities of the city have been explored (15.000.000 PARACHUTES). When the borders of the country have been crossed, arriving can result in being brought to a non-place where asylum seekers can live up to nine years before being sent back (STILL-LIFE). Even when the homeland is reached, the identity still needs to find its own positioning, such as is the case of many Armenians who return to Turkey (GARDEN DWELLING). In this journey, the metaphorical final destination has got the miraculous shape of a utopian return to the homeland (THE MIRACLE). Finally, cultural differences seem much smaller than what is usually described if we look at children’s behaviors: here, where the identity is still at the first step of formation, it is possible to trace the origins of common ground between different cultures (CHIRQAMY?).
In “Identity in Transit: a journey between borders” the following films will be presented:
1. FREEZEFRAME (USA/The Netherlands: Shailoh Phillips, 2009, 4 min)
Between a visual poem and a music video, Freezeframe is the story of a slug, moving slowly across the threshold of an ice house, unsure if it will remain inside the confines of the safe dark environment or escape into the wild world outside.
2. 15.000.000 PARACHUTES (Argentina/Sebastian Diaz Morales, 2001, 25 min).
This poetic documentary tells the cyclic story of an anonymous parachute in Jakarta. With his jumps, he explores the boundaries of the metropolis until deciding of crossing them.
3. STILLEVEN (STILL-LIFE) (Iran/The Netherlands: Omid Pourhashemi, 2005, 10min)
A young man who seeks asylum in The Netherlands: accommodated in a camp, he spent nine years between borders, re-shaping his identity to the new condition.
4. GARDEN DWELLING (Turkey/USA/The Netherlands: Tina Bastajian, 2004, 29 min)
This travel diary, recounts four Armenians’ visit to eastern Turkey, covering the spaces in between: the awkward translations, the mystifying exchanges, the unspoken tensions that still linger across a closed border, the identity shift in going back to the homeland.
5. THE MIRACLE (Panama/The Netherland: Antonio Jose Guzman, 2006, 5 min)
The filmmaker tries to convince his relatives to build a giant glass sphere in which he can leave Panama reaching The Netherlands across the Atlantic Ocean, travelling back via the African diaspora route.
6. CHIRQAMY? (HOW/IN WHICH WAY?) (Afganistan/The Netherlands: Dawood Hilmandi, 2007, 4 min)
The comparison between Dutch and Afghan children shows the existence of common behaviours not affected by cultural differences. The identity reveals the presence of a shared ground based on a language that is still universal and indefinable.
The film program will be followed by Q&A with the filmmakers.
