ABSTRACT
En construccion explores the life in Barcelona's Raval or Barrio Chino. It presents two Moroccan builders, Abdel Aziz and Abdelsalam, and their representation is remarkable on account of the originality with which they perform their migrant identities. Jose Luis Guerin more explicitly connects cinema and architecture, mixing fiction and reality while celebrating past traditions regarding building construction and cinematic techniques. Guerin focuses on the portrayal of the building as the physical and symbolic monument of dissensus, although, paradoxically, the physical and symbolic monument of consensus. The building under construction represents the landscape where both artistic and political practices meet. However, people see graffiti eyes crumbling when the wall is being demolished, as a warning of what will happen to our expectations and assumptions during the film. By explicitly contrasting both masculinities, the mentally weak Spanish man Ivan and the solid, hard-working Abdelsalam, the film is trying to create a positive image of the migrant.
