07/03/2008

Pantropa

Following the development of a work in progress ‘Europapoint’ by Samuel Stevens this series of screenings is a collection of films and videos that have influenced the project. The last of the screenings in the series being the film Pantropa itself.

Screening: 7pm - 10pm

Europlex, Ursula Biemann and Angela Saunders
2003, 20 minutes
The fourth in Ursula Biemann's critically acclaimed series of video essays that investigates migration across borders, EUROPLEX, collaboration with Angela Sanders, tracks the daily, sometimes illicit, border crossings between Morocco and Spain- a rare intersection of the first and third worlds. Paying off officials to look the other way, workers smuggle contraband across the border, sometimes crossing up to 11 times a day. In a now common scenario of global economics, Moroccan women work in North Africa to produce goods destined for the European market. And in perhaps the most surreal example of border logic, domesticas commute into a Spanish enclave in Moroccan territory, losing two hours as they step into the European time zone. With a mesmerizing soundtrack and a dizzying blend of video footage, digital graphics and text, the film exposes a fascinating, often hidden layer in the cultural and economic landscape between Europe and Africa- revealing the new rules and profound implications of globalization.

Passage, Samuel Stevens
2007, 5’25 minutes
The film depicts cargo ships off the shore of Istanbul, in the Marmara Sea, and later their cargo being transported by lorry through the border-post at Kapikule, which is a main entry point into Europe on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. This path, along what is historically known as part of the Silk Road, has been a major trading route for thousands of years and in today’s reality a main route followed by people wishing to illicitly pass into Europe. The use of text in the film not only relates to the transport of the goods cargos that turns the the global economy it also alludes to this precarious journey taken by hundreds who cross borders to find work every month.

Eugene Tsui en Tarifa
2006, 14 minutes
United States architect, Eugene Tsui, has designed the longest bridge in the world spanning the Strait of Gibraltar and connecting the continents of Europe and Africa. This revolutionary design does not resemble any existing bridge and features an original floating and submerging concept while creating a three mile wide floating island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Spanning about 9 miles the 14.5 kilometre floating bridge would contain 150 windmills and 80 underwater tidal turbines generating 12 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Here Eugene Tsui presents his utopian designs to officials in Tarifa, Spain.