AUTO DE DESTRUIÇÃO/
DESTRUCTION DEED
(Working Title)
Decades of neglectful housing policies, forced austerity measures and a giant wave of gentrification have left Lisbon’s most vulnerable families in extreme precariousness. With no other options, families resort to ocupying decaying municipal housing or self built communities risking state sanctioned violent illegal evictions, demolitions and jail time.
It is impossible to ignore that this situation disproportionally affects racialized people and questions of identity politics in relation to Portugal´s colonial past are raised.
The colonial constitution perpetuates the acceptance of the status quo, meaning that certain people leave in the worst places. The same marginalised bodies remain at the margins. Finding methods of story telling and development to avoid othering these communities is key, In other words:
How to tell the story of the marginalised without further marginalizing them?
"We are all many kinds of image: Images in the form of data, abstractions and as the objects of voyerism, desire, stereotyping, profiling, copying, sexism, racism, admiration, concern and respect.
The biggest chalenge facing us in our culture of hyper visibility, is perhaps that not everyone is a photographer, but rather that the machines that categorize, discipline and patrol the individual body operate through discriminatory abstractions that are simultaneously hidden by a semblance of neutrality and thus invisibility"
Louise Wolters, New Visibilities 1976
Mapping the Margins:
Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color ´
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw , 1991
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039
Mamma´s Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book
Hortense J. Spillers, 1997
https://www.jstor.org/stable/464747
Difference and Simiilarity: The burden of Identity
Jorge Vala
Can there Be Life Without the Other
Antonio Pinto Ribeiro/ Arjun Arpadurai/ Emilio Vilar/ Dipesh Chakrabarty/ Eunice de Souza/ Filip de Boek/ Jorge Sampaio/ Jorge Vala/ Karen Armstrong / Katerina Brezinova/ Manuela Ribeiro Sanches/ Miag Tiampo/ Mustapha Tlili/ Ruy Duarte de Carvalho/ Sherifa Zuhur
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2009
Untitled- Akinola Davies Jr, 2020
source: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/blog/untitled-akinola-davies-jr
A beautiful and intimate porttrait of the directors interactions with his mother during the Covid 19 pandemic.
A mix of still and moving images soundtracked by Akin´s Mother´s voice messages and a soundtrack by Duval Timothy.
"
She was raised, daughter to a teacher and a civil servant within a working class cultured yet colonial upbringing. Flanked by both rural and cosmopolitan existence. The second daughter within 6 siblings she carved an air of authority which at times made me think she was the eldest. She married my father and lost him a year into my birth. Leaving her widowed, unemployed and in possession of 4 children. She lives in the same house, the same room and sleeps in the same bed in which we lost our father - her partner. I often wonder how she remained so strong - how she compartmentalised the world she found herself."
Black Mother- Khalik Allah, 20019
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gheWdNNcv5w&ab_channel=GrasshopperFilm
"Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present."
Punta Sacra- Francesca Mazzoleni 2020
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpngQMBjIw&ab_channel=IDFA
The story of Punta Sacra a small comunity at the Idroscalo near Rome in Ostia. Most houses are self built and the place is at risk of flooding not just from the ocean but also from the river Tiber.
In 2010 a largeb number of the seaside homes was destroyed under and administrative intervention, withe presence of hundreds of armed police in full riot gear. The remaining families have never had their housing status legitimized and the threat of property speculation is also looming.
Punta Sacra is a portrait of a united in fragility community, fighting to keep their right to stay in the place that they always lived
Inside Aleppo: The tale of the Flower Seller
Waad Alkateab, Chanel 4 news UK- 20216
Source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJGp3g93h6M&ab_channel=Channel4News
The story of Abu Waad, who runs a garden centre in Aleppo.
This story struck me many. years ago as I had the chance to speak with the director and she told me that she strated filming stories like this to demonstrate that Allepo is more than just people hiding from bombs and that all other sides of life still continued, they were still humans not just victims.
Earth is as Blue as an Orange- Iryna Tsilyk, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGILh9uVXi4&t=37s&ab_channel=AlbatrosCommunicos
Based in the war zone in the region of Dombas, Anna and her kids are making a film as a coping mechanism to deal with the everyday horrors of the war. A loving portrait of a family under pressure, thia s is a good example of a portrait that. doest reduce participants to their plight but to all aspects of their lifes apart from time spent in bomb shelters
Via de Acesso- Nathalie Mansoux 2008
http://lugardoreal.com/video/via-de-acesso
The story of a community being evicted in Azinhaga dos Besouros in the outskirts of Lisbon to make way for a new access road needed to access a new big shopping mall projected for the area.
Most families were not included in the reaccomodation programs. A voice over reads excerpts of the residents communcation with the city authorities demonstrating the dehumanizing processes the residents go through.