Lisl Ponger: Passages (Passagen)
 
Why do we make a journey? Lisl Ponger’s found footage film offers a range of answers. It could be a sudden appetite for travelling, postcolonial privilege or even an unavoidable necessity. Lost in mesmerising images from travel films, we listen to the reports of travellers and refugees. Who tells these stories? Who films those journeys? A daughter asks her father on the run: “Where are we going?“ The father replies: “We’re going somewhere where it’s safe.“ Another woman meticulously describes each stage of her cruise on the Danube. Somewhere in between is where each journey begins.
 
Austria 1996, colour, 35mm, 12 min, German with English subtitles.
Directed by Lisl Ponger. Print Source: Six Pack, Vienna.

Angela Schanelec: Orly
 
In Paris Orly Airport, an exemplary non-place, Schanelec finds a perfect setting for her episodic structures. Numerous characters in transit briefly cross paths. Possibilities arise briefly before the journey continues. For example, we encounter a mother and her son. They have an argument. Something between them awaits revelation. With everyone on the move, it feels like everything could vanish at any moment. Yet as long as they are waiting, the filmmaker can highlight certain individuals and their conflicts before they vanish into the monotonous flow of people passing through.
 
Germany 2010, colour, 35mm, 84 min, French, German with English subtitles. Directed by Angela Schanelec. With Josse de Pauw, Bruno Todeschini, Natacha Régnier, Mireille Perrier, Maren Eggert, Emile Berling, Lina Phyllis Falkner. Print Source: Films Boutique, Berlin.

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