Passagen – Passages unfolds across an open field: a drawing, a voice on the radio, a printed fragment, a film, a few conversations, a story caught on the fly. These isolated gestures invite reflection on what persists in a porous city shaped by transit. What the archive cannot contain, the city still carries. A public bench. An anonymous face. A walk without a destination. We circle around what cannot be named. In this circular movement, things ultimately endure. Won Jin Choi (Belsunce Projects, Marseille)

about:borders2020, 2021

Video, 15min

At the end of July 2020 a group of activists transported a RHIB and a boom in an old T3 Bulli from Cologne to Lesvos to support the human rights observation of the association Mare Liberum and the safety of the crew on the ship in the Aegean Sea. In addition to transport, they also documented their journey to and on Lesvos and wanted to explore what networked transnational activism means during a global pandemic. Activists along the way told their perspectives of the boundaries they are confronted with in their respective spheres of action and how they deal with them.

Lesvos is an exemplary microcosm of the conflict over human rights violations in Europe – so this island is representative and sometimes covered with a lot of media attention. Volunteers and NGOs take on work that should be done by European policy on the basis of international law, humanity, ethics and values.

The old dinghy “Mudda” and also the rotten boom of the more than 100 year old cutter “Mare Liberum” had to be replaced. With it, activists are present off the coast of the Greek island of Lesvos and carry out research as independent observers to document and publish the current situation on the European border. The results and observations will be made available to the European public and refugee lobby groups. Since March 2020, the Mare Liberum was fixed due to a change in the German Ship Safety Ordinance and was able to operate only to a limited extent, while Covid-19 raged in Europe, Erdogan opened borders and right-motivated attacks on refugees and NGOs took place on the island.

With the voices of activists: Neda, Hadi, Iman, Giannis, Mary, Oriol, Marie, Dariush, Saskia, Jenny, Alice, Vera, Emma. 

Transporters: Sophia Leitenmayer, Nils Schellwald, Niklas Hirschfeld, Raimund Mess, Jan.

This film won the prizes Willy-Münzenberg Award for the most socially relevant film 2021 and Hamburg Young Filmmakers Award 2022.