Origin: Palestine | Documentary | Director: Dina Mimi | 13 minutes

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The Melancholy Of This Useless Afternoon II

A smuggler netted at a checkpoint pulls up a trouser leg, opens a pouch strapped to his shin and releases a series of goldfinches. Liberated from their mobile prison, the particoloured birds — lucrative goods on the black market — take flight under the eye of a customs official, as though the captive were a magician conjuring beauty from desperation.

The scene is from Dina Mimi’s short film “The melancholy of this useless afternoon chapter II”, which samples footage of contraband seizures on the crossing from Jordan to the West Bank, cut with shots of finches lured into traps or windswept grass filmed from a plane during take-off, to a soundtrack of birdsong. The video forms one element of a poetic installation exploring affinities between smugglers and fugitives, their daring escapes and the nets in which both are caught.

More information: https://art-action.org/site/en/prog/25/paris/prog_11_25.php?time=20h00