If they did not exist, we would have to re-invent them.

Festivals are the decentralised and irreplaceable spaces for imagining the unimaginable. Welcome to Trieste.

The Trieste Film Festival in northern Italy has grown alongside and within a city sitting close to the border between Italy and Slovenia - never a place of stable meanings for those born and negotiating their lives in the vicinity or even for those simply passing through.

You might remember the week I was there. As I watched a festival film called Germania Donald Trump gave his inaugural presidential speech in the US followed by a riff of madness in front of staffers. Later the same day Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute at a post-inauguration rally. The madness has cascaded ever since. 

Some years after WWII Trieste became the border between capitalist west and communist Yugoslavia. In more recent decades neighbouring states have become members of the EU facilitating somewhat more open borders and the disappearance of cold war infrastructures. Covid saw border restrictions reintroduced and then lifted. In recent months, border guards have reappeared again. Not all traffic is being routinely stopped. Yet nothing remains stable.

For the full text, visit Chris Baldwin on Substack.