The river does not kill
Euskaraz irakurri: Ibaiak ez du hiltzen
On April 22, 2021, the Irundarra filmmaker and musician Fermin Muguruza felt the cartoon that the illustrator Unai Iturriaga felt like a slap in the face. Zugazart published in the middle NaizFour days before, the Eritrean, the man, the person Tessfit Temzide had hanged himself in Azken Portu in Irun looking towards Hendaye, a place that the French Police had denied him by arresting him and prohibiting him from entering the Labortan town.
Through the power of the image, Zugazart equated Temzide’s death with that of the black people murdered at the beginning of the 20th century, especially in the southern United States, whose bodies hung from branches and to whom Billie Holiday honored in the song “Strange fruit” (“black bodies swaying in the southern breeze”). As he explained yesterday in the talk given in Durango, Muguruza then decided that he had to do something.
Said and done: while “Black Is Beltza 2: Ainhoa” was ending, Muguruza proceeded to document “what was happening in my beloved Bidasoa river since in 2018 the French Government will close the passage on the three bridges between Irun and Hendaia.” Since 2018, at least ten people have died trying to sneak from one side of the Bidasoa River to the other, either by drowning, run over by the train, or ending their own lives in despair.
“We didn’t want to make a journalistic documentary. We wanted it to be something different,” Muguruza explained in a presentation event for which the room looked full. As he is also accustomed to in music, he proceeded to practice, then on the screen, the mixing of styles.
Fermin Muguruza. Photo: Gerediaga Elkartea.
As in a classic documentary, “Bidasoa 2018-2023” brings together various testimonies from people working on the ground (representatives of associations that help migrants, the daughter of a Dominican emigrant, a person who tried to cross the border…), but it also offers images of the Bidasoa River itself, “another protagonist of the documentary.” Finally, using animation, the story of each of the people killed while trying to cross the Bidasoa muga is told: who they were, where they came from and how they reached that point where someone prevented them from moving forward forever.
Precisely, that was the main motivation of this work: to return humanity to those from whom it has been taken; recognize your identity Tessfit Temzide, Yaya Karamoko, Abdoulaye Koulibaly, Faycal Kamadouche, Mohamed Kemal, Ahmed Belhiredj, Sohaibo Billa, Ibrahim Diallo and Abderraman Bah. Creation, as an emotional complement to statistics; humanism, as an antidote to disaffection; the work, as a hammer against clichés.
Being a project by Fermin Muguruza, music has, of course, a fundamental weight in “Bidasoa 2018-2023”, and songs by several groups from the Bidasoa area can be heard during the 71 minutes of the documentary: Bad Sound System, Sonakay, Fermin Muguruza himself, Willis Drummond (sing “Bidasoa. Guretzat ez zira sekulan muga izan. Ez dugu onartuko hilerri bihur zaitezen” – Bidasoa. For us you have never been a border. We will not accept that they turn you into a cemetery), Olaia Inziarte (sings “Lehengo lepotikan burua” or everything remains the sameas demonstrated by the fact that people continue to die where the Portuguese fleeing the Salazar dictatorship did in the middle of the last century), Dut (“Bandera trapu bat da, haizerik ez badabil” – The flag is a rag, if the wind doesn’t blowsings the lyrics of his song “Haize eza”, written by Martxel Mariscal, while we talk about borders)…
‘Bidasoa 2018-2023’
Fermin Muguruza made it clear yesterday, at the end of his talk: “The river does not kill. The river is life, and it embraces both banks. Those who kill are the immigration policies.”
*”Bidasoa 2018-2023″ can be seen every day during the Durango Fair, starting at 8:30 p.m. in the Irudienea space.
Source: Eitb
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
