kalagrafia - dressed for the confines

DRESSED FOR

THE CONFINES

IN THE WINGS OF THE ITALIAN AMPHITHEATRE

film coming soon

"A powerful, hypnotic, true piece. After only a few minutes your feet turn to ice. The night passages. The footsteps through the snow. The world in its warmth, in its houses, that doesn't see and doesn't want to see. The invisible who see everything. I don't think there is another work that describes in such a real way what it means to migrate."Moreno Miorelli – artistic director of the arts festival Stazione di Topolò"Extremely powerful, an interpretation that compels you to immerse yourself in the invisible passages at the border. Impeccable because it never falls into pietistic vision and instead runs parallel with tourist and consumer mobility."Roberta Altin – author of 'Border Heritage: Migration and Displaced Memories in Trieste'"The originality of Opher Thomson's work is to consider the landscape set in motion by the migrants. Rather than foreign, unknown, bodies crossing a static field of vision, framed in a perspective not of their choosing, it is the landscape that is bought under the migrating eyes of the traveller, traversed and set in motion by their unauthorised movement. Transferred from a seemingly timeless background, the contours, shaping and challenges of the land acquire life. The landscape is never only ours to frame and define. The movement of other lives and bodies – both human and non – carry us to the edge of words and definitions ..." (See below to read in full.)Iain Chambers – author of 'Location, Borders and Beyond: Thinking with Postcolonial Art', 'Migrancy, Culture, Identity' e 'Paesaggi migratori'"It's difficult to think of a film that brings us closer, sensorially and emotionally, to the fatigue, the dismay, the fear, the determination, the surprise and the desire of those ready to do anything to seek a better life."Gianfilippo Pedote – film producer, screenwriter and director of 'Soldato Peter'"Dressed for the Confines maps a border from Slovenia to France through Trieste, Verona, Venice, Milan, Turin and Bardonecchia, passing by various traces of life ... by stations, shop windows, the restaurants that recount Italian-ness, by the day to day of those who live their lives in their houses, and those who are forced to see from the outside, glimpses through embroidered curtains. By the longing to arrive tomorrow, having avoided all the obstacles, all the police checks, as if inside an improbable game. Or a videogame, borne by the sounds that condition the course of the route, as unsettling as the choice of narrating with photographic stills, which, as the artist puts it, don't run into the future in the same way video footage would. And it is precisely this that Opher specialises in: not pretending to have us share in the experience of migration, but providing us with an interpretation, so that others can intuit with their own senses and so interpret for themselves."Andrea Rossetti – Artslife"A journey between the Alps and the Plains, places I know as an Italian with a valid passport, but seen through the eyes of those we label as migrant, irregular, clandestine. Invisible. The photographic technique displaced me at first, but then I entered the 'window' dimension, the diagonal visual angle of those hunted, of those who must quickly frame the territory, its threats and opportunities. The sound reconstructs the emotional landscape in a direct, subjective, engaging way. It is not an easy film, it must be experienced."Andrea Membretti – Reinhabit Italy and author of 'Migrazioni verticali. La montagna ci salverà? '

SYNOPSIS

A jacket hangs from a tree to the west, jeans hang from a tree to the east. The garments that decorate Italy's wildly different mountain borders are probably the only thing they have in common. Few have witnessed both. Those that have can perhaps understand the country in ways the rest of us can't.

This is one of the most visited nations in the world, with 65 million international tourists expected in 2024, now exceeding the resident population for the first time. Neighbouring France surpasses even Italy, with over 100 million arriving. The vast ski resort that straddles the border between the two exemplifies this movement, with over 10 million passages recorded in a winter. Its lifts carry those with credit across the border, legs dangling free, ski passes rather than passports, so they can glide back down over the snow that's sprayed each night. Not all are welcome. A few try to cross the same border with their own legs, but they trudge through the snow, sinking into it, at risk of being pushed back by the police who hunt them. They climb higher and higher to avoid contact, often at night, hoping to one day find a place to stay. Many have already crossed the desolate ruin of the abandoned Karst mountains, and have seen glimpses of Trieste, Venice, Verona, Garda, Milan and Turin, some of the world's most desirable destinations – but in the end Italy was not their destination. Italy was no place for them.

This film traces a humble journey across famous but unfamiliar lands, asking what such a perspective reveals about these dramatically changing landscapes. The juxtaposition of the two mountain ranges, abruptly connected by this precarious journey, creates for us a kind of prism that poses urgent questions about our parallel lives and collective values. It's often called the 'migrant route', but is it only those migrating that find themselves in unrecognisable places, or are we all in transit along the consumer route?

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Between 2022-23 I was collaborating with the University of Parma on the MOBS research project ('Mobilities, solidarities and imaginaries across the borders: spaces of transit and encounter'), tasked with studying migration at the mountain frontier between Italy and France and producing written and photographic material to be used in workshops we held there with social workers, volunteers and others involved in the local solidarity movement. Having observed and listened to many stories of migration from a stationary point there at the border, I came to realise that all these movements were taking place within the fixed framing of my gaze. A stable point of view is no less an active positioning, and mine replicated that of the inhabitants, the social workers, the police – my fellow sedentaries. If I was to produce material that might encourage deeper awareness and better understanding, inviting people to reflect and reconsider their experiences, I felt I needed to explore a new approach.

That winter most of those risking the alpine crossing had arrived from the Balkan route via Trieste, many just a day or two earlier, and I was struck by the sad symmetry of their brief transitory sojourn in Italy, that so much effort was made to get here across one mountain only to leave again over another, the 600 km between them passed in just a few hours by train. Mountain–plain–mountain, on foot–by train–on foot. I decided to follow this route for myself by the same means and at the same pace, hoping to arrive at a more empathetic reading of the journey. But rather than photographing the people and risking participating in the othering of their experience (not to mention for other obvious ethical and legal reasons), I tried to photograph what someone in such a position might see – the landscapes witnessed – reversing the gaze and inverting the sedentary representation of migration. In this way, the usual static vision portraying unknown people in transit would be replaced by a mobile vision portraying an unknown country in transition.

The images produced through this approach bear traces of sedimentary histories that together form a dynamic, multifaceted landscape, but it's very much the subjective perspective that reveals these traces. It's not a single photograph that discloses this meaning, but rather the combination and interaction of the images that reveals something. The true meaning can be found – or rather, created – between the photographs, and will be different for each observer in relation to their unique lives and memories. Here was a possibility. Images evoke other images, recalling other moments and emotions, and I asked myself whether the inherent ambiguity of photography might help translate such dizzyingly differing experiences, bringing disparate lives into conversation. Many who see this film will have the documents and resources to travel as if living in an alternative reality, but we've all been cold, lost or looked over our shoulder at some point. Perhaps photography, in touching memories of actions and experiences, in returning life to its verbs, can create little bridges where words and nouns keep us separate. Doubts abound, but along the way I found myself saying: I can't live this experience of yours, nor truly comprehend what you are going through, but in trying I might get closer.

I imagine that the meaning of this little film will quickly transform in time, as will the routes and the landscapes depicted, but it seemed to me in those dark nights on the mountain of utmost importance to chronicle something of these incredible, heartbreaking journeys, so as they are not lost to a disinterested history like who knows how many garments in the weeds. Landscapes belong no less to those migrating, on the contrary, sometimes it takes a little movement to see where we're at.

Opher Thomson, February 2025

INTRODUCTION by IAIN CHAMBERS

The migrant does not exist. It is a category created by an established order for those bodies considered out of place, for the unexpected and unsolicited arrival inaugurated by physical travel and cultural transformation. Created by the extractive economic and cultural exigencies of the established order, the migrant, rather than being a peripheral figure, exposes the political and ideological mechanisms of the status quo. Her presence, invariably racialised and rendered marginal, proposes a perpetual critique. Her failure, and refusal, to be assimilated, marks the limits of our political and cultural powers, and their pretences of universal recognition. Rendered faceless and anonymous, that is inferior and only abstractedly accountable in the syntax of reception, the migrant renders our language opaque and inaccessible to the transparency we seek to impose.

If the stability of maps and the rigidity of frontiers is clearly trespassed, it is the migrant who stains the presumed purity of the national narrative and crumples the documentation of citizenship and the unconsidered flexions of belonging.

The originality of Opher Thomson's work is to consider the landscape set in motion by the migrants. Rather than foreign, unknown, bodies crossing a static field of vision, framed in a perspective not of their choosing, it is the landscape that is bought under the migrating eyes of the traveller, traversed and set in motion by their unauthorised movement. Transferred from a seemingly timeless background, the contours, shaping and challenges of the land acquire life. The contested humanity of migration – who is identified with rights to mobility and who is physically blocked and culturally restrained – encounters a dynamic landscape where the petty provision of passports and permission gives way in the vicinity of altogether deeper roads through the world. The landscape is never only ours to frame and define. The movement of other lives and bodies – both human and non – carry us to the edge of words and definitions into a language that is not our own.

Iain Chambers, March 2025

(Author of 'Location, Borders and Beyond: Thinking with Postcolonial Art', 'Migrancy, Culture, Identity' and 'The Mediterranean Question')

FILM CREDITS

Written and Directed: Opher ThomsonWith the voice of: Abdul Almazai Developed with: Abdul Almazai, Jacopo Anderlini and Vincenza Pellegrinomade In collaboration and with the generous support of the University of Parma and the Association Kwa DunìaPhotography, Sound and Edit: Opher ThomsonAn independent production.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

DRESSED FOR THE CONFINES: IN THE WINGS OF THE ITALIAN AMPHITHEATRE 2025, Italy Language, Italian Other Languages Available: English 40 mins / HD / Black and White Screening Format: Stereo / various HD File options

The research behind this production was funded by the University of Parma through the MOBS research project 'Mobilities, solidarities and imaginaries across the borders: spaces of transit and encounter'https://mobsprin2020.org/

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