13/08

 Isabelle Tollenaere - 'The remembered film' (2018, 18’)

Very young soldiers wander aimlessly through a peaceful forest,but something isn’t quite right. Judging from their uniforms, they are Soviet troops and American soldiers wandering together peacefully among the trees. In front of the camera, the young soldiers share war memories they can’t possibly have experienced themselves. Connections arise between war and spectacle, history and representation, reality and imagination.

‘Soldier’s Dream’ by Sokurov shows Russian troops resting at a checkpoint. We see sleeping faces of young soldiers, a hidden inner world, cinema as a dream state. In ‘Once upon a time (Tierfilm)’ the camera turns and turns inside a living room. A cat appears. Another one. A bit later a dog appears as well. A bird, and a goat, a Lama! The room slowly fills up with animals. In the time period of the camera movements the impossible and wonderful happens. In ‘Atlantiques’ Mati Diop makes a circle movement. She films a conversation between young Senegalese dreaming about emigration, but their journey is most likely  already completed. Diop uses her edit to make the man travel between past, present and future. Floating between life and death.

These three short films break through the linear of time, or illustrate a world that breaks loose from time and reality. This is why I chose these films, because of their abstract movements throughout time and imaginary places. This is what cinema does like no other medium. And for me, time and time again, feels like a small wonder.

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