The director travels with a group of young Moroccan women who are going to visit their families. A story about migration, reunion, and loss.
UntitledMigration
10 Archival description results for Migration
Set in an imagined present in which a bridge spans the Strait of Gibraltar, Atlantropa mixes fact and fiction by connecting the bridge to contemporary news reports and to a modernist architect's vision: to dam the Strait and create a new continent. Originally intended as a symbol of unity between Africa and Europe, the bridge is eventually seized by EU forces and takes on a completely different meaning. The Gilbraltar Bridge, first mentioned in science fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, has more recently been investigated as an actual possibility by the United Nations.
UntitledWe follow the director's camera into the kitchens and living rooms of a community of Moroccan women. inside the walls of their apartment in Casablanca's old Medina, the women cook, clean, take care of their families and help each other. With their hands in the dough, in the soap whilst washing the laundry, doing the house chores, in the market or at the hammam, between laughter and tears ("We are housewives, that's all. ... Our sport? House cleaning!"). These courageous women, proud of their role, talk about their miserable lives with a great sense of awareness, but without self-pity. They show a surprising vitality, curiosity for life and solidarity. These house-proud housewives may not all know how to read, but they know exactly what would improve their lives: equal rights for women and men, more money, and a better future for their children so they wouldn't have to emigrate to support the family. A sense of hope and the possibility of change radiate out of the everyday lives of these heroines ("batalett").
Europlex tracks distinct cross-border activities through the Spanish-Moroccan borderland and seeks to make these obscure paths visible. On their repetitive circuit around the check-point to the Spanish enclave Ceuta, the video follows in three borderlogs the smuggling women who strap multiple layers of clothes to their bodies; the daily commute of "domesticas" who turn into time travellers as they move back and forth between the Moroccan and European time zones; and the Moroccan women working in the transnational zones in Northafrica for the European market. All these trajectories move around and in between the imperative of the territorial borders. They form, however, a vital layer of the cultural and economic space between Europe and Africa.
An 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).
“There is a saying in Arabic that translates as ‘I see the stars at noon'. We use it when everything in life is turned upside-down, when things are not as they should be. I first heard it in the tiny Moroccan village of Sebt Jahjouh, travelling with a man named Abdelfattah, a man whose world was upside-down, a man for whom things were definitely not as they should have been.” In January of 2004, in the northern Moroccan city of Tangiers, Abdelfattah is one of many trying to illegally immigrate to Spain by stowing away on a cargo ship. “I See the Stars at Noon” is at times humorous and disturbing, as it intimately examines the circumstances that lead him to risk everything for an utterly uncertain future. The traditional relationship between filmmaker and subject is thrown into question when Abdelfattah asks why his life is being filmed for the benefit of European audiences, and what he deserves in return.
UntitledThe night crossing of a Mediterranean city by car. Its passenger stay there almost invisible, absorbed by the urban view. A voice confirms a lonely night wandering in a city by the sea, an urban journey made to let the time pass away. Who crosses this city isn't only passing through it. He's a local, for a night, before an exile without return.
UntitledIn a bid to reach a better life, hundreds of Moroccan kids sneak into Melilla, a Spanish enclave in the north of Morocco. This is the story of Said, a deaf Moroccan boy stuck in this Spanish portion of Africa, awed by a false sense of prosperity, tries to jump into one of the many boats that will take him to the peninsula and eventually to the fulfillment of his European dream.
UntitledA man who is not there. A woman who receives his letters. She reads them to us, but remains out of sight. The man who sends the letters describes his journey. In the end, he stops writing. Has the journey, then, ended'
The port of Tangiers is a transit zone, and many travelers and goods pass through each day in huge trucks bound for destinations all over Europe. This is why large numbers of children and adults live in the port, waiting for an opportunity to hide under one of the trucks and cross the border into the Schengen zone. Almost all of them have a home and a family. Locals spend some time there and then return to their homes to build up strength for the next attempt. Those whose homes are far away settle among the containers or find a more or less inconspicuous hideaway in the port. Abdelghani is one of the minors who has decided to leave his family in southern Morocco to try and cross over to Spain.