The Zone

Black and white, 35 mm
Sweden, 2003, 10 min
Section: Documentary Competition

Synopsis

A ten-minute photographic testimony on motorcycles, anti-semitism, rock’n’roll and swastikas in the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers during the 1970s. Photographs documenting the roots of Neo-Nazism in Europe are accompanied by Baitel’s commentary describing his five-year sojourn in “the zone”.

About the director

Esaias Baitel (b. 1949, Trelleborg, Sweden) was born into a Polish-Lithuanian family (both parents fled to Sweden to escape Nazism). He studied at university in Uppsala and, over the next twenty-five years, gained international recognition as a photographer. He has published his work in the magazines Paris Match, Time and Newsweek. His book Jerusalem was published in Paris in the autumn of 2001 – his own view of the mythical town in words and images.