Maria Kourkouta and Niki Giannari, Specters Are Haunting Europe, 2016, France/Greece, film still
The Parliament of Bodies screening of Spectres Are Haunting Europe (2016), Maria Kourkouta and Niki Giannari, France/Greece, 100 min., Arabic, Greek, and English with English subtitles
July 26: The screening is followed by a conversation with Niki Giannari
Specters Are Haunting Europe looks at the daily life of refugees (Syrian, Kurdish, Pakistani, and Afghani, among others) in the Idomeni camp. People waiting in line for food, tea, and doctors; waiting to cross the border between Greece and Macedonia. One day, Europe closes its borders to them once and for all. The “residents” of Idomeni decide, in turn, to occupy the train tracks, blocking the trains that carry goods across the border.
Maria Kourkouta is a director who studied history of the Balkans in Greece, then moved to Paris to do a research for her PhD on the question of rhythm in cinema. She lives and works in Paris. Niki Giannari is a writer who lives and works in Athens.
The Parliament of Bodies is the Public Program of documenta 14. Its special film program adds another layer to the multifaceted experiments with new forms of sovereignty beyond the norm that take place within the spaces of the exhibition as well as in both cities, Athens and Kassel, in the form of a dissonant yet synchronic practices of heteroglossia and heterogeneity.