A film by Helena Barbagelata

A film by Helena Barbagelata

On February 13th, 2021, a fascist and neo-Nazi demonstration took place in Madrid to pay
tribute to the «División Azul» (Blue Division), the military unit that dictator Francisco
Franco sent to Soviet Union to support Hitler's troops during WWII. While holding up
fascist symbols and performing the Nazi salute, a crowd chanted anti-Semitic slogans
claiming that “the enemy is always going to be the same albeit wearing different masks: the
Jew. Because there is nothing that is more true than this statement: the Jews are to blame,
the Jews are to blame”, later stating that communism is “a Jewish invention to pit the
workers against one another".

Gatherings of this kind have been authorized by the competent authorities despite hate
crimes being committed every year. These have been years of unprecedented anti-Semitic,
racist, xenophobic and fascist activity, a time when authoritarian parties are on the rise
and many communities across the world had direct encounters with hate and oppressive
political regimes, a tautology that makes us question if the lessons of history have or will
ever be truly learned.
 A film by Helena Barbagelata

AHAVA is a body of interrelated audiovisual works exploring the diaspora, both as a

complex set of cultural, political and historical processes but also as lived and embodied
personal experiences. It’s a tapestry of collective challenges and expectations that are
indistinguishable from private dreams and agonies, intertwining the collective and
individual experience, using an artistic language that creates an immediate emotional
impact and depicts the improvisational nature of our internal soliloquies. AHAVA seeks to
evoke the powerful and unsettling experience of memory, and its borderless flow of
nostalgia and sharply contrasting emotions articulated with the themes of identity and
culture, exodus and exile, homelessness and homecoming, violence and peace, despair and
hope.

Weaving together our ever-changing, pulverized network of feelings, thoughts and actions,
reassembling the conscious and the unconscious, reality and fantasy, history and story-
telling. It is a visual narrative of the tragedy of the human condition and the consequences
of oppression, discrimination and violence.
EXHIBITION FORMATS | HD, DVD
IMAGE SIZE | HD
RESOLUTION: 1080 (HD), 8.5MBPS | 720P (HD) - 5MBPS
AUDIO FORMAT | 2.0
DISTRIBUTION | VIMEO
ASPECT RATIO | 16:9
SHOOTING FORMAT | 4K
COLOUR
YEAR OF PRODUCTION | 2021

MMXXI
 ARTWORKS
H E L E N A
SOUNDTRACK
VIDEOGRAPHY B A R B A G E L A T A

MMXXI