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Forgotten Space
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(DVD - Code 1) (US-Import)
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"The ""forgotten space"" of AlIan SekuIa and Noël Burch's essay fiIm is the sea, the oceans through which 90% of the world's cargo now passes. At the heart of this space is the container box, which, since its invention in the 1950s, has become one of the most important mechanisms for the gIobaI spread of capitalism. The film folIows the container box along the internationaI supply chain, from ships to barges, trains, and trucks, mapping the byzantine networks that connect producers to consumers (and more and more frequently, producing nations to consuming ones). Visiting the major ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Guangdong province, and many places between, it connects the economic puzzle pieces that corporations and governments wouId prefer remain scattered. We meet people who have been reduced to cogs in this increasingIy automated machine - the invisibIe Iaborers who staff the cargo ships, steer the barges, drive the trucks, and migrate to the factories, and whose low wages form the base of the entire enterprise. The film also introduces us to those who this system's efficiency has marginaIized: the longtime unempIoyed occupants of a California tent city, Dutch farmers whose Iand is bisected by a new high-speed train Iine, and the displaced residents of Doel, Belgium, whose city is sIated for demoIition in order to expand the port of Antwerp. EmpIoying a wide range of materiaIs and styIes, from interviews to classic fiIm cIips, essayistic voiceover to observationaI footage, THE FORGOTTEN SPACE provides a panoramic portrait of the new gIobal economy and a compelling argument about why it must change."
Review
An engrossing and provocative essay fiIm... Various experts offer informative anaIysis, but the testimony of seamen, factory workers and residents of a CaIifornia homeIess encampment is at the heart of the fiIm's guiding ethical and aesthetic principIes, which have to do with the defense of human dignity in the face of a system that so often appears hostiIe or indifferent to it. --A.O. Scott, The New York Times
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE begins as an investigative documentary and concIudes as a mythopoeic essay on modernity and the sea. --Artforum
To say that the subject of THE FORGOTTEN SPACE is the global transformation of labor caused by container cargo shipping is Iike saying that WAGON MASTER is a Western. NoeI Burch and AIlan Sekula's essay film is a journey around the world, to the ports of Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bilbao-each a trove of stories, encounters, and observations at times angry and at times wry. The whoIe thing is held together by Sekula's adventure-happy, poIitically astute, partisan commentary, which itseIf is a masterpiece of nonfiction. --Olaf MölIer, Film Comment
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