Documentary explores migrants, migration
Born in Yugoslavia, displaced to Cyprus, and now based in New York City, Iva Radivojevic combines intimate views of migrants’ lives with sociopolitical insights and lyrical poetry in her 2014 film Evaporating Borders. She will screen the film and answer questions from the audience Thursday, Nov. 19, starting at 6:30 p.m., in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. And she will give a lecture at 12:20 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20, also in Davis Auditorium. Both events are free and open to the public.
Evaporating Borders focuses on the refugee crisis in Cyprus, where a wide range of migrants, from Filipino domestic workers to wealthy Russian oligarchs, have been seeking a new home. The film has been described as a sweeping visual essay that contemplates themes of identity, xenophobia, and belonging. In a New Inquiry interview with film professor Cecilia Aldarondo, of Skidmore’s English Department, Radivojevic says, “I think there’s something very beautiful in tradition and culture.” But she adds, “I can see the way that dynamic has been dangerous” by sparking xenophobia and criminalization of migrants. With the film’s title, “I’m not saying that borders are disappearing. In part, I’m asking about the borders people create that don’t allow for difference.”
Radivojevic also argues, “War, the refugee crisis, climate change, everything comes back to capitalism. . . . Under economic austerity, people feel like, ‘We’re losing what’s ours, and if I don’t have enough how can I give anything to you?’ Ultimately, policies about immigration and borders are about this economic system.”
Radivojevic won a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2011-12 Princess Grace Special Project Award and Film Fellowship; in 2013 she was named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Her work has been shown in venues from the New York Film Festival to the Museum of Modern Art, from PBS to HotDocs. Evaporating Borders has won several awards worldwide.
Her visit is sponsored by Skidmore’s English Department and Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative.