The Right of Passage

On the occasion of the exhibition by Austrian artist Oliver Ressler at ar/ge kunst, The Right of Passage is an evening event featuring a screening and discussion of the film of the same name by Ressler and Zanny Begg.

The Right of Passage (2013, 19 mins) is partially constructed through a series of interviews with Ariella Azoulay, Antonio Negri and Sandro Mezzadra and focusses on struggles to obtain citizenship while at the same time questioning the implicitly exclusionary nature of the concept. The film refers to the stages or “rites of passage” that mark important transitions on the path to selfhood and suggests that freedom of movement must become a right granted to every person – regardless of his or her place of birth.

Biographies

Lorenzo Pezzani is an architect based in London and Trento. His work deals with the spatial politics and visual cultures of migration, with a particular focus on the geography of the ocean. Since 2011 he has been working on Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project that critically investigates the militarized border regime and the politics of migration in the Mediterranean Sea. He is one of the founders of WatchTheMed, an online platform that documents and maps the deaths and the violations of migrants’ rights on the maritime borders of the European Union. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Kent School of Law.

Andrea Deaglio was born in Turin, where he makes documentaries, multimedia and audio-visual productions with Mu Film. His documentary films include: Show all this to the world (Italy 2015, 55 mins) programmed at Bolzano Film Festival; Storie di uomini e lupi (Italy/France 2015, 75 mins, co-directed with Alessandro Abba Legnazzi and produced by Babydoc Film); Il futuro del mondo passa da qui – City veins (Italy 2010, 63 mins), winner of the award Joris Ivens – Best International First Film at Cinèma du Réel (Parigi 2011) and first prize at Docucity (Milan 2012); Nera – not the promised land (Italy 2007, 22 mins), winner of the Premio Anello Debole.

Monika Weissensteiner is an anthropologist whose research focusses on violence, conflict, migration and health, as well as on the Common European Asylum System. She is a member of EASA (European Association of Social Anthropology) and has been working with the Foundation Alexander Langer since 2014. She also follows the initiative ‘Brenner/o Border Monitoring’, an active presence that has been monitoring the Brenner Pass from an operational centre in Bolzano since 2015.

With the kind support of:
Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano, Ripartizione Cultura
Forum Austriaco di Cultura, Milano
Comune di Bolzano, Ripartizione Cultura
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio
Segheria Tatz Luis, Appiano

In collaboration with:
AKRAT, Cooperativa Sociale Bolzano
Bolzano Film Festival Bozen