DocsBarcelona 2014/ 5
Sunday morning in Barcelona, last day of the festival, awards to be given tonight. Walked home to hotel from the Aribau Club Cinema around 1am after quite a long festival evening. Accompanied by Irina Shatilova, whose film ”Linar” had been shown, as were ”Return to Homs” and ”Everyday Rebellion”.
We talked about the ”Femen” activists, who appear in ”Everyday Rebellion”, about Ukraine and Russia, and about Pussy Riots. As a true documentarian Irina Shatilova had been into the streets of Barcelona during the evening filming the demonstrations going on… while films on demonstrations were shown in the cinema halls! Leaving the cinema you could see black police cars lined up in the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes plus a couple of ambulances. The sound of police sirenes was loud as was the noise from above, the ever circling surveillance helicopters.
A quote from Guardian Thursday: Thirty people have been arrested after a third night of rioting in the Sants district of Barcelona. The trouble started on Monday when police forcibly evicted people from Can Vies, a building that has served as an unofficial civic centre for 17 years. After Wednesday night’s arrests more protests have been called for, with further violence expected…
Inside Aribau Club Cinema one of the Riahi brothers behind “Everyday Rebellion”, Arman, answered questions from the audience and invited it to go to the website of the popular film that deals with non-violence activism. We were afraid that it would be too late for a Question and Answer session after midnight, we were wrong, at least one hundred people stayed to take part.