The View from Our House

The View from Our House is a seventy-five minute film shot in Tempelhof, Berlin, that is, through its own evolved form, an enquiry into the representation of place in relation to memory and history. This is an experimental work that is partly documentary in nature but which, more significantly, employs particular forms of representation, through image and sound, that raise questions about time and memory, authenticity and veracity, subjectivity and objectivity, document and fiction. The form of the film has evolved out of a particular response to place and location in relation to personal memory. The film explores ways of reconstructing and articulating memory, in image and sound, principally through the representation of the physical space of a particular urban location and the appropriation of both personal and researched archived accounts. The work refutes standard documentary conventions and develops a non-linear approach to the depiction of memory and history. The result is a fragmentary and rhythmical form that invites multiple readings and interpretations that foreground memory in relation to history. The film explores the use of a specific digital medium and is an example of experimental practice in the area of what has been termed the ‘essay film’. The film is designed to be screened in a traditional auditorium but its form also invites other means of dissemination – and explores the possibilities for long-form works situated within gallery installation (some of our previous collaborations have been screened in a gallery context).

The View from Our House (UK 2013, 76 mins) (Funding Arts Council of England) Screenings: International Film Festival Rotterdam (2013), Galerie Collection Regard, Berlin (2013), Zerstoerte Vielfalt Ausstellung, Berlin (2013), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014), Birkbeck Cinema, London (2014), Cambridge International Film Festival (2014), Liverpool International Photography Festival (2015), Dis/Placed, London (2015), Close Up Cinema, London (2016), ABCD Film Club Abingdon (2018) Sprengel Museum Hanover (2019), Four Corners, London (online screening) 'Another Eye: Women refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933' (2020)