ScreenNotes:
Borders and Boundaries

On the evening of 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. Marking this anniversary, our season Borders and Boundaries is a timely reminder and opportunity to contemplate the borders, boundaries and divisions between peoples, though the 20th century and into the 21st.

This season of films looks at man-made, physical borders and the ways in which they have been represented, challenged and transgressed on – and though in the medium of film.

When filmmaker Hassan Fazili is threatened by the Taliban, he and his family are forced to leave Afghanistan, travelling through Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia, in the hope of reaching the sanctuary of the European Union.

Midnight Traveler documents their dramatic and uncertain journey, captured by the family on their mobile phones. The result is an undeniably cinematic account of both the hindrance – and possible safety – of borders, showing first-hand the dangers faced by refugees seeking asylum, from menacing smugglers to far right nationalists, as well as the love shared between a family on the run.

Two Guatemalan siblings flee the civil war and attempt to make the dangerous journey to the US, via Mexico, in Gregory Nava’s masterly Oscar-nominated epic.

After a bloody massacre, brother and sister Enrique and Rosa make the difficult decision to leave their home and head north to start a new life in the US. El Norte was one of the first productions to focus on the challenges facing Latin American migrants hoping to cross the US border.

This masterly film, newly restored, has never been more relevant. Never trite or sentimental, this is an affecting drama that neither glorifies nor downplays the struggles of its characters.

The Sonoran Desert is among the most dangerous routes taken by those crossing from Mexico into the US. In this experimental documentary, haunting 16mm images of the forbidding landscape are overlaid with voiceover testimonies by migrants, residents and border patrol.

The unseen speakers tell of the multiple dangers they face on their journey, made overnight away from the merciless heat of the desert. As the migrants speak of their sacrifice and struggle, the filmmakers present 16mm footage of images of flora and fauna and items left behind by those making the journey. El Mar, La Mar is unique and powerful work of protest art and an impactful riposte to the immigration policies of Trump’s America.

In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this Architecture on Film double-bill presents two idiosyncratic films on two of its more unusual stories.

Berlinmuren follows Swedish artist Eija Riitta, who consolidated her lengthy love affair with the Berlin Wall by marrying it. In Lars Laumann’s film, Eija narrates her romance and union with the wall – a love story that transcends distances, age, politics and indeed convention.

Rabbit à la Berlin shows a different side to the wall’s rise and fall – from the perspective of the thousands of rabbits that called its ‘Death Zone’ their home. Barbed wire turns to concrete, humans start behaving strangely as they erect lengthy structures of unknown purpose, and a paradisaical ‘rabbitland’ flourishes in the ‘meadows’ – but soon the rabbits are forced to adjust to a very different way of life…

Curated by the Architecture Foundation in partnership with the Barbican.

Made just after the fighting ended on the Korean Peninsula in 1953, this film-noir thriller follows a North Korean spy, who meets a handsome South Korean student. Using music score sheets to encrypt classified information, Margaret, a spy, passes secret messages to the North Korean army. But when she shows an interest in a poor South Korean student, is it romance across the divide, or an elaborate plan to recruit him?

Blending several genres – film noir, romance, thriller – The Hand of Fate creates a hugely enjoyable movie that acts as an invaluable time capsule of early 1950s South Korea.

In 2002, Israel has started constructing the ‘separation wall’ dividing Israel from the West Bank, on a disputed line, cutting through the historical landscape with miles of concrete slabs and wire.

Questioning the divide from her own perspective as an Arab Jew, Simone Bitton’s documentary focuses on the construction of the Wall in a meditative journey that blurs the lines between the communities that reside on the land.

Wall shows the implications of daily life on both sides of the fence. Interviewing government officials, Palestinian workers who constructed the wall and an array of people on both sides of the hundred’s miles partition, this is a reflective and striking portrait of a divided land.

A romance between two gay men is threatened by the wall that divides their city, in this rarely-screened West German drama.
Felix visits East Berlin on a day-trip with an American friend, he meets Thomas with whom he forms an immediate rapport. He continues to visit Thomas, making sure he’s back in West Berlin by curfew but their romance soon arouses the suspicions of the East German police.

Filmed illegally on hidden cameras in East Berlin, Wieland Speck uses authentic footage that lends an unworldly atmosphere and a real sense of latent danger throughout. Despite this air of danger, it’s also a charming romance and an unjustly neglected curio in queer cinema history.

In this inventive documentary, artist Mariah Garnett traces her roots to Belfast, where her father lived during the Troubles. After reuniting with her father in Vienna, she travels alone to Belfast, were he grew up, to explore and reconstruct his early life.

An original take on a still contentious space, once in Belfast she herself portrays her father and casts a trans actor as his Catholic girlfriend, using archive footage to highlight the contemporary controversy of interfaith relationships. It’s a fascinating, experimental take on identity, gender and the borders between us – literal and metaphorical.