Passeur
Filipa César
2008 - 34 min - 16 mm & HD - Couleur - Portugal

In 1974 the so-called "Carnation Revolution" brought an end to Salazar’s "Estado Novo" ("New State") dictatorship in Portugal. More than thirty years later, Filipa César conducted interviews with four former activists who had been assisting illegal crossings of the Portuguese-Spanish border between 1971 and 1975. With a montage of sound and image recordings, Filipa César creates a complex narrative structure that explores the relationship between the four as well as the correlation of subjective and collective memory and the modes of political action. The sound of flowing water of the river Trancoso, that the refugees had to cross, as a moving landscape image evokes the passing of time. Thereby Le Passeur also becomes a reflection on the nature of film in relation to the static image.