INTERFILM42: The Past - Of Landscapes, Objects and Historicity

The notion that there is a throughline running through history, a sort of common thread, is seductive – alas, it quickly reveals its limitations when put to the test. What we really experience is more like a vast tapestry unfurling before us: we discover history as a chaotic weave, a complex fabric, or, occasionally, as a knotted ball of yarn too. Six films search for loose ends – or beginnings – and give them a tug, to connect that which cannot be separated: present and past. Packing lists are drawn up for incarcerated friends, dancing bodies pursue post-Yugoslav identities or ones laden with a certain nostalgia for the GDR, and surveyors examine landscapes marked by colonialism, military history and war.

Image gallery