THESE ARE NOT MY IMAGES (NEITHER THERE NOR HERE)

AVEC UNE BANDE SONORE DE STUART JONES - WITH SOUNDTRACK BY STUART JONES

of BATSRY Irit

UNITED STATES, 2000, 01:20:00

Production : BATSRY Irit, En association avec ARTE France, et l'ACADEMY OF MEDIA ART (KOLN)
Genre : Video art, Documentary, Creative documentary
Keyword : Alterity, Sound creation, Gesture, Identity, Images, Place, Memory, Editing, Perception, Portrait, Reality, Work, Travel

Summary :
THESE ARE NOT MY IMAGES (neither there nor here) interweaves elements of different genres (documentary, essay, experimental, narrative) in order to question the way we see and show reality. These Are Not My Images follows the voyage of a disillusioned Western filmmaker, accompanied by a half-blind guide and her encounter with a local filmmaker in a skewed "road movie" set in the near future. It evokes the different meanings of "place" : a location, a territory, a context, a situation, and a home. It speaks of being at your own place and being (at the place of) another, about identity and alterity, intimacy and distance, about the relationship between the "first" and the "Third". Images and sounds were recorded in Tamil Nadu. The images refer to different modes of image-making (painting, photography, film and video). They alternate from documentary" to "painterly images" created through digital and analog processing. The soundtrack ranges from untreated to heavily processed sound. It discourses with the image in a variety of ways ranging from constructed soundscapes which almost seem to be 'sync' sound, to points when the sound is counterpointed to or displaced from the image. It aims by these means to draw the audience to finding their own place in relation to the work and the material it is made with." (Stuart Jones). The film questions the boundaries of the "Documentary": How much "reality" do the transformed images and sounds retain ? Are framing and editing less deforming than electronic manipulation of images ? The work is a voyage into the land of a cinema that doesn't only show but also reflects and questions. The cinema of Marker's Sans Soleil, of Rossellini's India. Pasolini once said : "A Westerner going to India has everything, but gives nothing. India has nothing, but gives everything." Is the act of making a film an act of giving or an act of taking ?

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