"Looking through the iron curtain" di Anja Medved
Gorizia e Nova Gorica: due città totalmente diverse pur contigue nel nome e sulla carta geografica. Gorizia è un antico centro urbano, orgoglioso della propria storia millenaria. Nova Gorica, frutto del socialismo reale, è una città fondata oltre confine nel secondo dopoguerra.
Il 21 dicembre 2007 la Slovenia entra nell’area del trattato di Schengen e quel giorno le due città vengono riunite. Una baracca degli ex ufficiali doganali viene trasformata in “confessionale” dove gli abitanti dell’una e dell’altra Gorizia vanno a raccontare le attività illegali, il contrabbando, i silenzi e le parole di una vita passata a difendere la propria identità e a difendersi da quella degli altri.
Per la prima volta, dopo sessant’anni c’è un’aria nuova, libera da barriere e confini. Anja Medved mescola a reperti filmici d’epoca, tratti da archivi privati, un girato diretto, dentro il confessionale. Immagini rubate ad una vita di confine, la cui memoria permane, ancora viva e bruciante, nelle generazioni di oggi.
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"Looking through the iron curtain" by Anja Medved
Nova Gorica and Gorizia are completely different, even at a first sight. Gorizia is a traditional urban centre proudly wearing the charm of its thousand year old history, while Nova Gorica is one of the few entirely modern cities, conceived in a future oriented socialist spirit.They belong to different states and in the past they also belonged to different social systems although they are both located in the same geographical area and together compose one complete urban entity. People living here had to adapt to the presence of the border in their everyday life.
For them, 20 December 2007 was of historic importance. For the first time in as many as sixty years, the two cities could breath without customs officers and border posts. For Nova Gorica, this was a completely new experience, for its construction only began after the border had been established. On 20 December 2007 therefore, a former customs officers’ hut was transformed into a “video confessionary” to which people living on both sides of the border were invited to “confess” their smuggling “sins” and to forever let go of their border “guilt”.
Some of thus entrusted memories, together with fragment footages from family and film archives, reveal two different realities brought to life simultaneously in the same place. Together they narrate the story of an absurdity inherent to all the border areas in the world.
