Migrant Children and the “Space between” in the Films of Angelopoulos
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Publication Type:
- Chapter
- Citation:
- The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film, 2022, pp. 220-238
- Issue Date:
- 2022-04-20
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Childhood is a category of difference within sameness, a form of being that is intrinsic to all human life, and yet is simultaneously unavailable to adult humans. In the context of global migrations, childhood occupies an even more ethereal space of belonging and exclusion. This chapter advances Donald’s earlier work on Angelopoulos and the example of many other scholars working on the great auteur. His death in 2011 notwithstanding, Angelopoulos’ work still resonates with ongoing twenty-first-century historical conditions; the chapter explores that resonance, particularly in relation to his achievements representing the experience of migration and childhood. The child migrant’s journey through actual and imaginary borders—of innocence and knowledge, security, and alienation—epitomizes the transience of childhood itself, within which there must always be accumulation of understanding and preparation for survival among adults. The chapter argues that through Angelopoulos’ use of what French cinematography terms l’intervalle, or “space between,” he visualizes both the negative impact of migration on the collective (generally, the family) and, simultaneously, the ways in which children attempt to reformulate mores of belonging to contingent units of identity and emotional comfort.
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