My name is Ion. Who could have imagined the fate that awaited me: my birth under the Romanian dictatorship, the loss of my eyesight through an accident, my sudden escape from my homeland to seek a future that was a little too idyllic? One thing is certain: fate is like all the criminals that I listen to today for the Belgian federal police. With a little willpower, there is always a way to dodge its tricks. The person who taught me that is a close and loyal childhood friend. That friend is literature. Without her, I probably would not be what I am now, here, among you.
My name is Ion. Who could have imagined the fate that awaited me: my birth under the Romanian dictatorship, the loss of my eyesight through an accident, my sudden escape from my homeland to seek a future that was a little too idyllic? One thing is certain: fate is like all the criminals that I listen to today for the Belgian federal police. With a little willpower, there is always a way to dodge its tricks. The person who taught me that is a close and loyal childhood friend. That friend is literature. Without her, I probably would not be what I am now, here, among you.
2013-07-08
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We think we know what ethnic profiling is, but what does it feel like? Dutch citizens report on at times bizarre and disconcerting experiences with police checks, where their skin colour routinely makes them suspicious. For years, the police has been aiming to proactively execute security checks in order to arrest more riff-raff. But practise shows that Dutch people with a migration background are regularly stopped without any suspicion of criminal offences. Poignantly, the teacher, the soldier, the lawyer, the rapper, the fellow police officer and other coloured Dutchmen talk about helplessness, frustration, humiliation, alienation, anger and what it feels like to be a suspect from the start. Wry, but insightful indictment of ethnic profiling.
Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.
The film springs from at least three ideas connected to each other in an irrational way: the story of a cow being taken to the butcher, the description of simple pleasures, how to ascend to the top of a hill and descend in a wheelbarrow, and the portraiture of a several blind people. The great, big eyes of the cows are seen in contrast to the unseeing eyes of the blind people.
In Greensboro, NC, a small church community offers sanctuary to Juana Ortega, a Guatemalan grandmother threatened with deportation after 25 years of living and working in the United States.
Documentary that shows the changing attitude towards immigrant labor in The Netherlands. The documentary follows three immigrants that arrived in Holland 30 years ago to work in a bakery.
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
The extraordinary untold story of the heroism and sacrifice of the NYPD’s elite rescue squad - the Emergency Service Unit - on 9/11.
Recognizable among a thousand, Commissioner Maigret is creating this winter's cinematic event. After Jean Gabin or Bruno Crémer, it is Gérard Depardieu who embodies the iconic character of George Simenon, inspired by a real police officer. Vidocq, Borniche, Bertillon, the great cops are an inexhaustible source of creation for artists. Delon and Belmondo have built their careers on the figure of the cop. However, his image is blurred by police violence and desacralized by the protest song.
Because of the poor employment situation in Finland, many families and single people decided to move to Sweden to seek employment in the 1960s and 70s. The move was considered temporary and it affected people’s ways of making themselves at home in the new country; they did not even try to adapt or learn the language of the country. At that time, the nicknames “Finnjävel” and “Hurri” were well-known to Swedish-Finnish youngsters: In Sweden, they were regarded as Finns; and the other way around. As neither nation’s citizens approved them as their own, the Sweden Finns had to create their own identity. But what kind of lives do these immigrants’ children and grandchildren live today? Jonas Karén was born in a Finnish family in Husby’s suburb 1980.
A short film documenting the immigrant experience. Open-borders? Policing? Naturalizing? Etc.
The protests of 1968 had a significant impact on the great cities of the world. But people like to forget that the periphery went through the same social upheavals – Central Switzerland, for example. This is hardly surprising: in the founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy, society followed a strict order; tradition, shaped by centuries of Catholic rule, seemed untouchable. But in the 1960s, the local youth could not take these stifling conditions anymore: starting in 1969, resistance broke out across Central Switzerland.
As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.
In 1892, Ellis Island, in New York Bay, became the main gateway to the United States for immigrants arriving increasingly from Europe. The story of immigration to the United States from 1892 to 1954, an enthralling polyphonic narrative that embraces both small and great history.
In October 2015, the evicted residents who had imprisoned on a false charge of killing a policeman assembled in a place for the first time after the Yongsan Disaster six years ago. They had occupied a watchtower against unreasonable redevelopment policies and in protest against violent suppression used by riot police in 25 hours of their sit-in demonstration. Their colleagues had died from an unknown fire, and they became criminals. The delight of meeting again lasts only briefly. The ‘comrades’ rip out cruel words while blaming each other.
At the turn of the century, Sephardic Jews fled the turmoil of their homeland to start a new life in America. Filled with interviews, archival photos and dozens of Ladino phrases, this slice of Northwest history captures their story as they arrived in Seattle and found work at the Pike Place Market.
With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children’s unique perspective of the world.
Filmmaker Arturo Perez Torres follows in the footsteps of two friends traveling on an extraordinary and extremely dangerous journey from Central America to North America. On their journey they encounter gangs and vigilantes as well as border patrol. But these immigrants navigate real-life nightmares with uncanny calm, grace and even humor in their perilous pursuit of the a better life.
Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.