José, Victoria and Miquel are three of the people who have lived on the streets, or are very close to doing so. Antibiografies is a documentary about the lives of Barcelona’s homeless people, a hidden world that is less visible but no less real or alive than any other. The protagonists talk about how they survive, their relationships, and the occupation of public space. A vision of tod ay’s society from a marginal, frontier perspective.
Catalunya
30 Archival description results for Catalunya
"Stranger is the one that is always asked: ”Where are you from, brother?” or is asked ”Is it hot in your country?” He doesn't care about details concerning the people in the country he is or about their domestic politics'. But he's the first one to suffer its consequences. He may not be happy when they are happy but he's always afraid when they are afraid". Mourid Barghouti
UntitledEspacio del inmigrante is a self-managed space created by and for migrants. A space for gathering, reflection, and action. Drawing on “migrant" knowledge and putting forward their own racialised bodies, its members seek to generate new forms of resistance, empowerment and defense of migrant persons as political subjects.
The last four years the city of Barcelona has implemented a model cornering those who are outside the triumphalist paradigm of modernity, Europeism and prosperity. The best example of this discourse is the district of 22 @. An area of the city built atop the old industrial neighborhood of Poble Nou, located on the northern edge of the city. It is in this space that we find the settlement. This is home of about 300 people of different ages and nationalities. There are sub-Saharan immigrants living here with or without papers, Romanian’s, South American’s, Maghreb’s and also Spanish. Many of them with a common history. A few years or months ago they had home and work. But with the crisis the work ended and they had to leave their homes. People went to the settlement, although many did not like the place, because its better than sleeping in the street. There is more security, there are chances of surviving with the collecting of junk and then selling it for recycling the metal, and also a sense of community. Junk has become the main income for the inhabitants living. In the settlement three bars have been opened, these supply, at reasonable prices, food for the community and a comforting coffee or beer at the end of the day. In the middle of all this struggle to keep breathing, in July 2012 things turned a little more dificult. Because of the complaint of the foundation “Maite Iglesias Baciana”, who owns the land where the settlement is and its main job is to send humanitarian aid to countries like Africa and Honduras, a police eviction was declared and scheduled for July 16 of that year. Not happy with this hypocrite behavior they also refused to negotiate with the lawyers that the Poblenou neighborhood residents had managed to find to defend the inhabitants of the settlement.
UntitledSomething happened on the Spanish-Moroccan border in Autumn 2005. A thing that is still happening today in other places and in other ways. Hundreds of sub-Saharans used ladders to cross a European border. Weapons, rubber bullets, death. Thousands were deported to the Sahara desert. Death. Spanish television broadcast images of an accelerated war. Just bodies, not individuals. Something we watched. Returning to the place where it all happened we find nothing but empty space. A landscapes without traces. What remains, that fence. How is it possible to create new representations that don't get lost in the oversaturation of images that present migrants as victims? Others had already asked themselves the same question. A group of Congolese refugees is stuck in Morocco waiting to reach Europe. They have created a theatre piece based on their experiences of migration. In the room where they live each day, it takes shape as a self-representation of each step along the path. But it is not a finished work. There is no audience and no stage, just a work waiting for its ending.
This video of a migrant sit-in in a Barcelona church is part of a long-term project about the struggles of legal and illegal migrants. This segment describes the sit-in on a night in June 2004 as experienced inside the Iglesia del Pí, documenting the assemblies held by the migrants under pressure of the government, major trade unions and the police, followed by the declarations made through the press.
UntitledEurope Trap is a film depicting the true struggle of a refugee. A close-up of Zakereh, a 55-year-old mother trying to reunite with her son, who is trapped in Greece. Through her eyes we shall witness her struggle against herself and society; a struggle as hard as the previous one she faced during wartime in Afghanistan. Zakereh fled Afghanistan many years ago. She escaped from war but she found misery and hostility. First in Iran, as a widow, with one child and without any rights, and later on, by crossing without papers many borders until she arrived in Europe. Once in Europe, at Athens airport she lost her son Omid and arrived alone in Spain without knowing where she was. Now she is suffering from culture shock, trying to fit in in another world where she doesn’t belong and dealing every day with a strange reality, with all her sadness and pain. The intimate portrait of an Afghan woman, who first became a widow and then a refugee. A testimony of the incomprehension of a new world and the situation she has to deal with now – a war as hard as the previous one, in the Europe Trap. A documentary about exile, loneliness, and the ghosts of war.
UntitledAn initiatic journey Videos from an exhibition at the Centre de Cultura Comtemporània de Barcelona from March 26 to May 30, 2002 (a project by Albert Garcia-Espuche and Toni Serra). Into the innermost parts of the city of Fes.Using audiovisual recordings that illustrate some of the different anthropologic, sociologic, urbanistic and religious aspects that make up the fabric of the city. A journey that requires both objectivity (in the working method) and subjectivity (for the experience of the journey and immersion in another culture).
On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.
UntitledThrough many voices, this project articulates the process of living in an area that until recently formed part of the periphery of the city of Barcelona. Torre Baró and Vallbona are two neighbourhoods that are expected to become a node of connection and expansion of metropolitan urban growth. This video tells the short history of these neighbourhoods by focusing on various themes: a first part explains the occupation of the area by settlers and self-builders; a second part characterised by the struggle, the process of socio-political demands and the consolidation of the associative movement; and a final part that outlines its possible future as an enclave of connection and interrelation with the urban context.