Details
Man Number 4 examines an image on social media that appears to be depicting a scene that is difficult to comprehend upon an initial glance. Accompanied is Background which explores limitations of borders, technology and time between Syria and Germany from the 1950’s - 2020’s.
Man Number 4 / Dir. Miranda Pennell / 2024 / 10’
The filmmaker comes across an image on social media. The scene it appears to be depicting is of such relentless violence that it is difficult to comprehend upon an initial glance. And so, the filmmaker thinks through the image piece by piece, undoing the compression algorithms to look behind the clusters of pixels. She identifies scenes in the image – a humvee, a studio light directed at a line of handcuffed men – that reveal how systems of cruelty come to be constructed and disseminated, and just how far the viewer of such an image is implicated in this violence.
Background / Dir. Khaled Abdulwahed / 2023 / 64’
In 1956, the filmmaker’s father travelled to the GDR to study as an exchange student from Aleppo. Now, living in Leipzig, the filmmaker attempts to reconcile the traces of his father’s time in Germany with the images of the country he encounters in the present. The few photographs taken of his father and isolated documents in German archives go some way to materialising the memories shared between father and son across temperamental long-distance phone lines but the distance, between Syria and Germany, between the 1950s and the 2020s, persists. The gaps are filled by the filmmaker himself, creating images he did not see and memories that he was not told, to work around the limitations placed upon him by borders, technology and time.
Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. In collaboration with Alchemy Film & Arts.
