Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed

Miranda Pennell
,
UK
,
2010
,
video
,
b&w
,
28'

An exploration of turn of the century colonial life along the Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan). Triggered by the memoirs of P.L. Pennell, a medical missionary, the film is constructed from still photographs. Sound and image are played against each other in a search for the stories behind the images, generating parallels wiith contemporary portrayals of a distant place and people. 

The Indian Boundary Line

Thomas Comerford
,
US
,
2010
,
16mm
,
colour
,
42'

The film follows a road in Chicago, Rogers Avenue, that traces the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis boundary between the United States and “Indian Territory.” In doing so, it examines the collision between the vernacular landscape, with its storefronts, short-cut footpaths and picnic tables, and the symbolic one, replete with historical markers, statues, and fences. Through its observations and audio-visual juxtapositions, The Indian Boundary Line meditates on a span of land in Chicago about 12 miles long, but suggests how this land and its history are an index for the shifting inhabitants, relationships, boundaries and ideas of landscape – as well as the consequences – which have accompanied the transformation of the “New World.” 

relocation (objects in the mirror are further than they appear)

Pieter Geenen
,
BE
,
2011
,
video
,
colour
,
23'

Situated at the point where four countries meet (Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia), mount Ararat is Armenia’s most important national symbol, full of mythological meaning and believed to be the place where Noah’s Ark stranded. Once part of a larger Armenia, mount Ararat is now located in Turkey. Since 1920, after the Armenian genocide, it’s just behind the closed border with Turkey, still dominating the Armenian landscape. Armenians can only gaze at it with longing. relocation shows a mirrored landscape suggesting the (for Armenians) impossible view from the Western side. A dialoguing text comments on the landscape as subtitles to a film. As if both mountains were in dialogue with each other, it is mainly a dialogue between two nations, with historical, political, biblical and utopist connotations.