Fortieth session, Cine_ilegal

Film screening proposed by Joseba García Martín, followed by a debate.

The Suspended Step of the Stork (Theo Angelopoulos, 1991, 143 min.)
The “Waiting room” is a Greek city on the border with Albania. Alexandros, a journalist, is covering the situation of refugees waiting there for authorisation to leave. During his reporting, Alexandros thinks he sees a Greek politician who disappeared some time ago in the middle of a crowd.

Special marks that divide, social constructions that separate, and in the middle, modernity, the iron cage, bureaucracy, the “waiting room”, the place of forced stasis, stopping, subordination: “We have crossed the border but we are still here. How many borders will we have to cross before we get home?” Journeys to and from after non-places under the open sky. The line which separates heaven, purgatory and hell, a priori equivalents (neither is preferable to the others), equally (in)habited by bodies, forgotten phantoms and spectres who are collective memory. ‘Memory’, ‘History’, ‘territory’, ‘migration’ and ‘borders’, the reinstating of a new order of formed chaos…

Joseba García Martín (Irún, 1991) has just finished a degree in Sociology at the UPV/EHU, and is continuing his studies there. Like in a film, his school librarian introduced him to the world of film before she retired. What he knows about it now and knew then is nothing special.