5 June 2019

Shelter: Farewell to Eden



Enrico Masi : 2019

Pepsi is a transgender woman looking for a stable job as a caregiver. As a former member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front active in an island of southern Philippines, she escaped from her country to work as a nurse for over 10 years in Gaddafi's Libya. Because of gender discrimination, she was forced to join the flow of refugees. Then, she faced European institutions as an asylum seeker. It was in the city of Bologna, Italy, where she obtained the first acknowledgement of her status. However, she could not stop there. Her journey continued towards France, crossing the dangerous "pass of death" on the heights of Ventimiglia. With the strength of her experience in the wild mountains of Mindanao she reached Paris. There, she acquired a second identity and found underground work offering massages, sharing interstitial spaces among the harsh architectures of the metropolis. Her voice-over tale is a post-colonial parable, in which European geography mingles with an intimate emotional drama. Her wander recalls the ancient myth of Europa, according to which a young woman was kidnapped and raped by Jupiter, in the shape of a bull. He took her to an island in the Mediterranean from which she gave the name to the continent. 16mm film, analogue video and grainy iPhone footage contribute to a phantom image of life in the urban underground. A strategic and militant response to society's aggressive insistence that everything and everyone can be defined according to the norms of the majority. Enrico Masi's documentary premiered at Copenhagen International Documentary Festival 2019, and had its UK premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019.

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