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Self
Non-human animals have always been around us, shaping and being shaped by our shared worlds. Yet in the modern city, their presence is increasingly cast as a problem, and their ways of living as disruptions. By following their traces, this film essay points toward a different picture that questions the narratives we take for granted. Through more-than-human encounters filmed locally in Romania, and a critical detour from the official discourse, other ways of living begin to surface. Perhaps there’s more we can do to unmake the anthropocentric landscape. What would it take to coexist more justly with urban animals? This film strays with this question and its possible answers.
The New York of News from Home was filmed in 1976, while the one of Taxi Driver was filmed in the summer of 1975. Both works reflect the same decadent city. Two visions that shift from the everyday to the existential complement each other. A resignification of Akerman's images through the voice-over of Scorsese's work.
An experimental short assembled from YouTube videos of the director’s former classmate, TV fragments, and a 2006 graduation interview recorded in Alchevsk. What starts as an ironic play with early-2000s home-video aesthetics slowly falls apart. Through montage of personal and online material, Chepelev tries to reconnect with a man he once loved – a man whom war and time have made almost unrecognisable. Laughter loses its protective function and gives way to the impossible wish to return to a place that no longer exists.
