Film Screenings / Programs / Series
DISPLACED PERSONS: MIGRATION ON FILM
April 29 – May 4
In collaboration with the International Center of Photography – whose current exhibition, “Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change,” includes a section devoted to the refugee crisis – Anthology Film Archives and the Goethe-Institut New York present a film series highlighting moving-image works that have depicted and explored the subject of mass migration and the experiences of refugees, particularly in the 21st century. The program showcases contemporary filmmakers’ attempts to reckon with a phenomenon that has recurred throughout human history but that remains a tragic part of our war-torn, cataclysmic present, and to put a human face on a topic that’s in perpetual danger of dissolving into a stream of statistics and neutered images.
“Displaced Persons” features, among others, films from the Middle East (A WORLD NOT OURS, which documents a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon), Africa (THOSE WHO JUMP), Asia (Rithy Panh’s debut film, SITE 2, about a Thai camp for refugees from Cambodia and elsewhere), and Europe (two separate portraits of Lampedusa, the Italian island that is on the front line of African migration). The series also anticipates Anthology’s retrospective (coming later in May) of the work of Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, who has been exploring issues of migration throughout his extraordinary career, and culminates in a week-long run of Wang Bing’s monumental new film, TA’ANG.
This program is co-presented with the Goethe-Institut New York and the International Center of Photography.
Very special thanks to Wenzel Bilger & Sara Stevenson (Goethe-Institut New York); Pauline Vermare, Nicole Restaino, and Joanna Lehan (ICP); Maren Hobein (Goethe-Institut London); Jacques Bidou (JBA Production); Michaela Cajkova (Taskovski Films); Mahdi Fleifel; Sylvain George; Jonathan Hertzberg (Kino Lorber); Srdan Keca; Njoki Nyoli (MPM Film); Philip Scheffner; and Vladimir Tomic.
Vladimir Tomic
FLOTEL EUROPA
2015, 70 min, digital. In Bosnian with English subtitles.
In 1992 a wave of refugees from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina reached Denmark. With existing refugee camps completely full, the Red Cross pulled a giant ship into the canals of Copenhagen. The ship, Flotel Europa, became a temporary home for a thousand people waiting for decisions on their asylum applications. Among them was a 12-year-old boy, Vladimir, who fled Sarajevo together with his mother and older brother. They spent two years in the limbo of Flotel Europa. More than two decades later, Vladimir Tomic constructed this filmic portrait of the experience of growing up on this ship filled with echoes of the war – and other things that make up an adolescence. The coming-of-age story is juxtaposed with personal VHS archive material shot by the refugees who shared the “space-time vacuum” of the Flotel.
Sat, April 29 at 4:45 and Tues, May 2 at 7:00.
Rithy Panh
SITE 2
1989, 90 min, video. In Khmer with English subtitles.
“For Rithy Panh’s debut film, he returned to the borderland between Cambodia and Thailand ten years after he himself had been a refugee in the region. Site 2 (or Site II) is the name of what for many years was the largest camp for people that fled Cambodia and refugees from Vietnam that had come via land. Founded in 1985 on Thai territory and closed in 1993, its population had reached 180,000 at the time when Panh shot his film. On the one hand it had a developed infrastructure with hospitals, schools, temples, and a market; on the other hand, like many other refugee camps in this region, its population suffered from internal and external violence and diseases. 5.6 square kilometers large, fenced in with barbed wire, and patrolled by Thai forces, it offered a very restricted life for its inhabitants, who were assigned minimal personal space. Rather than dramatizing these negative aspects, Panh’s remarkable film calmly follows the daily routine in the camp.” –Maren Hobein, GOETHE-INSTITUT LONDON
Sat, April 29 at 6:45 and Sun, April 30 at 4:00.
Philip Scheffner
HAVARIE
2016, 93 min, digital. In English, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Russian with English subtitles.
“With HAVARIE, Scheffner made the radical decision – in light of the current refugee crisis – to replace the 90-minute visual track of the film with a 3.5-minute cell phone YouTube video of Algerian refugees adrift in a tiny boat in the Mediterranean – an image stretched in slow motion over the entire duration of the film’s soundscape. […] The boat anchors the spectator’s gaze as diverse languages and viewpoints on the soundtrack and in the subtitles discuss the waters, the plight of refugees, other maritime forms of migration and transnationalism on cruise and container ships, the desire for Europe, memories of crossing, of home, loss, and longing. […] [Ultimately the] film’s imagery gives way to a confrontation between supplication and agency in which spectators must acknowledge their cinematic privilege, a stand-in for their privilege beyond the movie theatre. But the confrontation of positions is also an opportunity for exchange, for thought, for communication.” –Brigitta Wagner, SENSES OF CINEMA
Sat, April 29 at 9:00.
Moritz Siebert, Estephan Wagner, and Abou Bakar Sidibé
THOSE WHO JUMP / LES SAUTEURS
2016, 80 min, digital. In French and Bambara with English subtitles.
In northern Morocco lies the Spanish exclave of Melilla: Europe on African Land. On the mountain above, over a thousand hopeful African migrants are encamped, watching the fence separating Morocco and Spain. Abou from Mali is one of them – the protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it. For over a year, he has ceaselessly attempted to jump the fence. At the fence, they have to overcome barbed wire, automatic pepper spray, and brutal authorities. After every failed attempt, they return to Mount Gurugú, scouring for food in the nearby villages, trying to uphold some sort of order in the camp, and building up their confidence again. Some give up and return home, others never return. Through the lens, Abou gradually finds expression and meaning in his situation. “When filming I feel that I exist.” But after 16 months on the mountain, returning to Mali is not an option for him and he becomes more determined than ever to pursue his dream of a better life in Europe.
Sun, April 30 at 6:00 and Tues, May 2 at 8:45.
Mahdi Fleifel
A WORLD NOT OURS / ALAM LAYSA LANA
Lebanon, 2012, 93 min, digital. In English and Arabic with English subtitles.
Before his family settled in Denmark, filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh, in Lebanon. Hastily built in 1948 and, at the time of filming, housing 70,000 refugees in one square kilometer, Ain el-Helweh is an unlikely source of nostalgia and yearning, but for Fleifel it represents the closest thing to a home, a precious concept given his family’s history and eventual settlement in Europe. Through the years Fleifel returned regularly to visit friends and family, always with camera in tow, and in A WORLD NOT OURS he shapes his extensive video diaries into an affectionate, witty, yet ultimately shattering portrait of this community. Gradually focusing on the experiences of Fleifel’s friend Abu Eyad, whose natural intelligence makes him an especially articulate and sensitive witness to the tragically circumscribed lives of Ain el-Helweh’s residents, A WORLD NOT OURS conveys the Palestinian experience with an insight that very few films have equaled.
With:
XENOS 2014, 13 min, digital
Fleifel’s follow-up to A WORLD NOT OURS continues the story of Abu Eyad. In 2010, Eyad and others travelled with smugglers through Syria and Turkey into Greece in search of a better future, only to find themselves trapped in a country undergoing economic, political, and social collapse.
A MAN RETURNED 2016, 30 min, digital
Fleifel’s most recent film focuses on yet another camp resident first seen in A WORLD NOT OURS, Reda. Like Eyad, Reda made his way to Greece, but was ultimately deported, returning to Lebanon with only a heroin addiction to show for his troubles. Finding a camp torn apart by internal strife, he decides, against all odds, to marry his childhood sweetheart.
Total running time: ca. 140 min.
Sun, April 30 at 8:00 and Thurs, May 4 at 7:30.
Jakob Brossmann
LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER
Austria/Italy/Switzerland, 2015, 93 min, digital. In Italian with English subtitles.
This documentary reveals the numerous crises besetting the residents – both temporary and permanent – of Lampedusa, the Italian island that is the first port of call for African migrants striving to reach Europe. While the migrants protest the poor treatment they receive, the local fishing community is also restless. There’s division among the inhabitants of the island, and the garbage is piling up – as are the leaky, abandoned immigrant boats in the harbor. In the meantime, a lawyer from Palermo is trying to arrange a place of burial for those who have died, and the mayor is trying to keep everyone calm. LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER is an elegant documentary portrait of a tiny community at the edge of Europe that’s engaged in a desperate fight for dignity, and for solidarity with those who many consider the cause of the ongoing crisis: the African boat people.
Mon, May 1 at 7:00.
Gianfranco Rosi
FIRE AT SEA / FUOCOAMMARE
2016, 108 min, digital. In English and Italian with English subtitles.
Like LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER, FIRE AT SEA takes place on the remote Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, which has become a major entry point for refugees into Europe. There, we meet Samuele, a 12-year-old boy who lives simply, climbing rocks by the shore and playing with his slingshot. Nearby, we bear witness as thousands of men, women, and children risk their lives to make the brutal crossing from Africa. Filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi masterfully juxtaposes these realities, jolting the audience into a new understanding of what is happening in the region, the heavy toll of the migrant crisis, and the price of freedom.
Mon, May 1 at 9:00.
Sylvain George
MAY THEY REST IN REVOLT (FIGURES OF WAR) / QU’ILS REPOSENT EN RÉVOLTE (DES FIGURES DE GUERRES)
2010, 150 min, digital, b&w. In French, English, and Arabic with English subtitles.
“This FIPRESCI prize winner at the 2011 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI) leaves policy debates about European immigration aside in favor of a piercing, immersive encounter with the migrant experience itself. French documentarian Sylvain George spent three years recording in black and white the daily grind of the inhabitants, all men, from the Middle East and North Africa, of a makeshift refugee camp in the French port of Calais. By turns poetic and blunt, George’s montage connects us intimately to bodies and voices battered by waves of hunger, fear, anger, hope, boredom, and isolation – culminating in the camp’s destruction by police.” –UCLA FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE
Wed, May 3 at 7:30.
