For one afternoon only in Chapter 2 when 'normal' people were out enjoying the sunshine, the founder member of the Grungetown awkward squad was indulged in 112 minutes of pure, unadulterated socialist propaganda. It was my first time in Chapter 2 since the re-furbishment and a WoW is required for the plush seats in fluffy red and a ceiling like a poor person's planetarium with little stars of light. I only found out about the film this morning and what took me up the Taff Trail and across Pontcanna, avoiding the lay-line was the promise of a world tour on a Container Ship. We begin in the Port of Rotterdam, a place I know well and which features in my book to be published in 2012 'Amsterdamned'. I walked around the port of Rotterdam whilst undergoing a Psychosis or Brainstorm. It was rather uncomfortable, watching the Containers being moved and handled mechanically, everything automated because in the words of the Port Manager, they don't go off sick, they don't go on holiday and they don't have a Union. Watching the Forgotten Space was like being a Ship's Captain on a Container Ship with the Cinema Screen like the Window of the Bridge. The Film is a collage of various cities and ports around the world Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Bilbao. The people who are interviewed are like Dresden dolls, fragile in their humanity as they co-exist and live within the borders of this Capitalist Profiteering. The saddest stories came from America with three people who mesmerised you with their story and personality. They were living in a Container Yard and they couldn't get out. Human Psychology and Poverty had conspired to keep them prisoners within its walls. The Chinese Story, although sobering does not persuade, that the people are not content, even though to the Western eye, their work conditions and tasks prove mundane and soul-destroying. The film did not really succeed in painting the Global Shipping Industry as an evil, although you were always aware of the ecological effect on the environment and if the film succeeded anywhere it was in showing the indomitable human spirit in face of the oppressive drudgery of their work, no more so than the Fillipino Domestic Maids and Nannies meeting for one Sunday afternoon underneath the escalators of Hong Kong. The film ends in Bilbao and shows how the Titanium covered Guggenheim Museum despite the glowing accolades from an urban planner do not persuade that it is anything other than a Capitalist's plaything. It is people that make places and this film should really have been called 'The Forgotten People'. It was meditative and persuasive and perhaps the Chinese Academic and the Dutch Historian provided the best 'vox pop' and commentary. I was indulged. My confirmatory bias was confirmed.
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