Those migrant journeys

Migration statistics and policies hide the subjective experiences of migrating people. The hidden violence of controls pushes unpleasant sights away from European eyes. Forgotten film images bring the past to life and restore precious memories of loved ones to those who remain.

How can cinema respond to the migration crisis in Europe? Maria Iorio and Raphael Cuomo prefer to start by questioning the way this crisis is presented, only as a problem for governments, whose responses are normalized, while masking the deeper violence of criminalizing desperate people and those who rescue them. As the directors say, drawing attention to capitalist dynamics: 'Invisible fluxes of oil and gas beneath the Mediterranean connect Fortress Europe to Libya and the African continent, but the mobility of people on the surface is criminalised and interrupted.'

Their film "Chronicles of that time" goes beyond conventional documentary to uncover the shifting subjective experiences of migrants, emphasizing that 'past and present find echoes and resonances; the past can be reactivated... and return as a potentiality for the future. And it is a fragmented past which they discovered recorded in unused film sequences they had made years earlier.

A moment of parting from their protagonist, a Tunisian seasonal worker, seeded the logic of the film reconstructing the words of the past as if following the melodies of a forgotten song. As artists and filmmakers, they say: 'one of our urgent tasks is to contribute to tearing down a racist system of perception... and reimagine a world without those neo-colonial power relations.

Maria and Raphael talked to The Prisma after their film premiered at VisionsduReel, it was part of the international competition of FIDMarseille in July 2021.

The full interview can be read with links and images, where it was first published on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper website here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2022/06/27/those-migrant-journeys/