ICR Romanian Cultural Institute London

Stefan Constantinescu's new film, El Pasaje (the passage, the ticket), is about the existential transition of three Chileans who were forced to leave Chile after the Pinochet controlled coup d'etat of 1973. All three ended up living under Nicolae Ceausescu's communist dictatorship, and over time, two of them left for Sweden. El Pasaje is a film about refugees, strangers, the past, prejudices and loneliness.

The artist Stefan Constantinescu, born in Bucharest in 1968, gained notice in Sweden in 2004 with his film Dacia, but he had already awakened interest in Vilnius and Bucharest with his previous project The Archive of Pain. The latter, a project produced together with film director Cristi Puiu and graphic designer Arina Stoenescu. The project deals with the 1945-1965 period and concentrates on the confessions and destinies of former political-prisoners in Romania. In Dacia, his video project from 2003, Constantinescu presents, in a more or less autobiographical manner, the period 1968-2000 and has as its focus the Dacia 1300 car, a Romanian version of the Trabant. Dacia is the most representative symbol of Ceausescu's communism, a symbol of the working class victory over time. The project was presented among others in the Norrköping Konstmuseum, Malmö Konstmuseum, Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Vector Gallery in Iasi, H-arta Gallery in Timisoara and Würtembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart.

Due to both its documentary characteristics and its indirectly autobiographical format, El Pasaje in many ways recalls Dacia. In some ways, everything began on the 11th of September 1973, when Salvado Allende was assassinated during the coup d'etat when three Chileans were forced to leave, alongside a few thousand others, and were brought by fate to Romania.
The three primary destinations of the 200,000 political refugees who left the country after 1973 were the USA, Argentina and Sweden. Meanwhile, Ceausescu's Romania functioned as a connection between South America and the former Eastern bloc.
Two of the refugees interviewed by Stefan Constantinescu ended up in Sweden. One of these is Pedro Ramires, a main character in the film, who now works as a train security guard. Even though he has completed studies in law and as a cameraman, he commutes between Stockholm and the city's outskirts. His story is pieced together through his melancholic description of estrangement, isolation, and political oppression.
The story of three Chileans is told with the aid of interviews, how they arrived in Romania via Peru, how they were welcomed and received apartments in two neighborhoods in Bucharest, how they attempted to adapt to a country that politically corresponded to their ideals, how their dreams faltered, and some of them ended up in Sweden, a country where they had heard that dreams could come true. One of the refugees still lives in Romania, one of them left Sweden after 23 years and is now trying to adapt to a new country, his own, Chile.

The film also contains footage of Pedro's first film shot in Bucharest and music from the group Inti llimani a symbol of Chilean resistance and Agnetha Fältskog's song, Thank you for this wonderful ordinary day.

The project was financed by Konstnärsnämnden, Sweden.
Passagen 2005: DVD, 62 Minutes.

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