Stills from "Where is Where" (2009), written and directed by Elija-Liisa Ahtila.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s film “Where Is Where?” will be showing at MoMA from October 1-October 7. The film, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, confronts Europe’s history of colonialism. A poet, visited by Death, tries to unravel the killing of a French boy by his two Arab friends during the Algerian war. David Reilly reviewed the film for Whitewall’s summer 2009 issue. Here’s an excerpt from his review:
Making its U.S. premiere amid the commercial fanfare of Sundance 2009 was an enigmatic, sobering reminder that no matter how deliberately we distance ourselves the bloody history of Western colonialism cannot and should not be ignored. Where Is Where?, the new four-image split-screen film from Finland’s Eija-Liisa Ahtila, thrusts the specter of Death into the living room (quite literally) of an unnamed poet, forcing her to confront the consequences of Europe’s global hegemony.
True to its title, Where Is Where? is a cryptic mélange of locations, time periods, and stylistic modes. The screen’s quadrants constantly fluctuate between archival footage, spare theatrical set pieces (including a Lynchian singing performance), and the breathtaking re-creation of a child’s murder. Divides between past and present, fantasy and reality, and Europe/Africa/Middle East are rendered immaterial within the film’s shape-shifting milieu.
Everywhere in the film, the Bergmanesque Death figure looms large: Moments into the prologue, he is knocking at the door of the poet’s rural cottage. His entry into this serene space triggers the revelation of a forgotten past: the 1950s murder of a young French boy by two Algerian playmates, originally recounted in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Suddenly, documentary footage from colonial-era Algeria floods the screen, while the poet — possibly a stand-in for Ahtila herself — finds herself wandering through a minimalist staging of a military home invasion. This dreamlike moment becomes shockingly real as Death transports the poet back to her living room, where she witnesses a group of white soldiers open fire on an Algerian family.
Bewilderment quickly turns to guilt, and the poet can no longer dissociate herself from the colonial violence, even when taking into account Finland’s own 700-year history under Swedish and Russian rule. She seeks guidance from a nun, but finds little solace in the platitudes of Christian reconciliation. “What is left if everything is forgiven and will be forgiven?” muses the poet. “Then evil becomes invisible and good is just indifference to evil.” She realizes that the notion of “forgive and forget” is just another form of revisionism. As Ahtila herself notes, it is “a necessity to take a stand and recognize our history,” however unsettling that history may be.
To read more, check out Whitewall’s summer issue in stores now or online by click HERE.
Stills from "Where is Where" (2009), written and directed by Elija-Liisa Ahtila.
