These are Not My Images (Neither There nor Here)

THESE ARE NOT MY IMAGES (neither there nor here) interweaves elements of different genres (documentary, essay, experimental, narrative), in order to question how 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.

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 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?

Production: Irit Batsry in association with ARTE France and The Academy of Media Art (Koln)

With the support of DAP (Ministère de la Culture), New York Council of Arts, Experimental TV Center Owego, Central St Martins College of Art and design, Grand Canal (Paris), The Lux Center (London)