Evaders
Gersht, Ori (2009) Evaders. [Film, Photography]
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Evaders portrays a journey traversing the legendary Lister Route through the Pyrenees across the French/Spanish border. The passage is surrounded by exquisitely beautiful and severe vistas, with extreme elemental conditions: locals claim the 'Transmontana' wind can make travellers go mad.
The making of this film was itself an expedition, with unanticipated environmental phenomena influencing the process. With my small crew we retraced the path taken by Walter Benjamin during his escape from Nazi-occupied France (and by many others fleeing Nazism). With its harsh conditions and tragic history, the route has come to symbolize a border between life and death itself.
The film does not attempt to portray Benjamin or his journey in a literal sense. Instead it explores a primal struggle between a solitary individual and the elements, set in a nonspecific time. It was visually inspired by Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus, referenced in Benjamin's final essay 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. This tragic image of an angel battling the elements, attempting to cross a border or, as Benjamin suggests, to return to the past in a helpless desire to resurrect what has been smashed, is at the core of the film.
The visual references to German Romanticism suggest a fatal attachment to German culture that prevented Benjamin and others from seeing clearly the terrible truth of the Nazi project until it was too late to escape its consequences. In the film the traveller is hopelessly moving through the romantic landscape attempting to free himself from the physical and cultural burdens that are embedded in this sublime environment, preventing him from reaching a new horizon.
The production was supported by the Arts Council, UCA, CRG Gallery, New York, Mummery & Schnelle Gallery, London, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles and Neoga Gallery, Tel Aviv.
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