Where Do We Migrate To? Film Series
Opening Program: Fortress Europe
Date: Friday, March 18, 2011
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Shriver Hall
DIRECTIONS & MAP
Cost: Free
Grossraum (Borders of Europe), Lonnie Van Brummelen and
Siebren de Haan, 2005, 35 minutes, 35mm, The Netherlands
A poetic triptych meticulously shot on 35mm, Grossraum examines three distinct border zones of the European continent, establishing Europe as a fluid, ever-expanding entity, which while reconfiguring its internal divisions simultaneously delineates increasingly enforced external borders. Van Brummelen and de Haan s film presents captivating images of these landscapes, as well as the daily activities that unfold at such sites of transit. The checkpoints this vis ually engaging film presents are Hrebenne (between Poland and Ukraine), Ceuta, a small Spanish enclave in mainland Morocco, and Nicosia, divided between Turkish-occupied North Cyprus and Greek S outh Cyprus, each loaded with political and historical significance visualizing the notions of exclusion and inclusion “fortress Europe” signifies.
Intermission
Introduction by curator Sonja Simonyi
Import / Export, Ulrich Seidl, 2007, 135 minutes, 35mm, Austria
Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl s feature film narrates two distinct trajectories of import and export across New Europe. A young Ukrainian nurse leaves her mother and infant son behind to pursue a more hopeful life in Austria, where she finds illegal work as a cleaning lady in a geriatric hospital, while an unemployed and debt-ridden Viennese youngster embarks on a reverse trajectory, helping his stepfather on a business trip to the Ukraine installing outmoded gambling machines. As the film ruthlessly delineates the various relationships of exchange between East and West (through which everything and everyone is for sale), Seidl uses these investigations to sketch the marked social inequalities throughout Europe, as well as more deeply rooted existential crises associated with the first world, throu gh which a stark portrait of Western Europe emerges.
Please join us for an after-screening reception in the back of the theatre.