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Life in an Immigration Detention Centre is not life at all, it is waiting. Waiting and fear. Fear of deportation, fear of losing your direction while your life is limited to the four walls of the cell, fear of a future that could surely not be worse. The testimonies of former inmates of the Immigrant Detention Centre (CIE) at Zona Franca, Barcelona, offer us a glimpse of the reality of these illegal, covert prisons.

“Socotra, the island of djinns” is based on the book “Socotra, la isla de los genios” published by Atalanta ediciones. The film is the story of a trip on the remote island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean, known in antiquity for its Phoenix and Rukh birds. In the rest of the Indian Ocean, the monsoon winds, have propitiated commerce and civilisation. Without any bay or natural port and surrounded by reefs, Socotra is isolated during the monsoon when is imposible to land. This isolation has preserved a unique environment. Frankincense and myrrh trees grow freely on Socotra.The dragon blood tree unique to the island has sap that is a red as blood. It was used by the gladiators of Ancient Rome to cover their skin and to protect it from injuries. The varnish that gave a unique and precious touch to Stradivarius violins, is also credited to the sap of the tree, a secret kept by the luthiers of Cremona. On the journey are Ahmed Afrar, youngest son of the late sultan of Socotra, some companions and three cameleers with their animals. They trek to the mountains before the rainy season. En route to visit relatives, the socotrians speak tell stories by the fire. During the night, conversation turns to legends of djinns and monstrous snakes that dwell in the cavernous interior of the island. A surprising and vanishing world is revealed. Is the first and only movie spoken entirelly in the genuine socotrian language, A southern arabian language related to the old language of the Kingdom of Sheba.

... 3 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1996.

There are many protagonists in this video: the woods, above all, and different types of animals, natural light effects, installations by various artists (these were installed along the pathway in a Piedmont Valley in the North West of Italy as a result of a production of material in the field occurred during the project “La collera delle lumache” (The Snails’ Wrath), the stream, the sky, and other landscapes. Each of these elements, from time to time, can ‘take over the scene’ of Soglie (Thresholds), becoming the momentary protagonist of the work, totally without any pre-established hierarchies. An intangible entity that was possible to document only by evoking it with this composition of images and sounds, all of which are absolutely authentic and not treated in any way during post-production. One could define Soglie (Thresholds) as an epic of the events of those days, that which was seen by the invisible eyes of the woods and narrated by the forest itself. I repeatedly dreamed of it over the long term that I devoted myself to the choice of images and sounds, and to their transformation, and now tell my dream to everyone who sees this video work.

"In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors..." [William Blake] An old pilgrim dressed in rags observes a flower in the dark of the night ... The old man is a door between the things that are known and unknown ... symbolizes the decline and the end of what we have taken for real, and now it is perceived as ephemeral and inconsistent, as the poverty of his clothes dragged by time. The proximity of death as an unavoidable truth gives his own vision; a new and deeper insight not limited to visual perception, and beyond logic and laws of the world. Maybe that's why in the dark of night can contemplate the beauty of a flower.

2 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1994.