Where Is Where?

Finnish artist Elja Liisa-Ahtila has worked with multichannel formats since the 1990s, and her precisely structured, one-hour-long, split-screen depiction of a real incident that took place during the Algerian War of Independence from France resonates alternately with poetic imagery, literal history, and symbolic references. Where Is Where? is an experimental narrative that relates an incident that took place in the late 1950s. As a reaction to the atrocities of French colonial repression, two young Arab boys killed a French friend, a boy of their own age. Utilizing both the fictive reality of the film itself and a theatrelike set, the narrative mode breaks with traditional story time and framing to advance a complex flow of imagery and ideas. The overall collision of narrative lines comes through the perspective of a European poet: visited by Death, he gradually investigates the past to reveal the importance of the event for the present day. At once hauntingly elusive and very direct, the film artistically challenges the norms and preconceptions of reading and storytelling as well as depicting the clash of cultures and societies. Evocative and dense, Where Is Where? is ultimately a condensation of the mists of truth, a gathering of the fragments of knowledge, and perhaps a conduit for an alternate perspective.
CAST

Eija-Liisa Ahtila - Eija-Liisa Ahtila is visual artist and filmmaker. She has studied film in Los Angeles and London. Her films and multiscreen installations explore and experiment with narrative storytelling, creating extraordinary tales out of ordinary human experiences. Her works investigate the processes of perception and the attribution of meaning, breaking down the story on several screens around the viewer in the space. Ahtila was born in Hämeenlinna, Finland, in 1959 and now lives and work in Helsinki.

Screenings:

Sat. Jan 17 12:15 p.m. - WHERE174D Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City
Sun. Jan 18 12:45 p.m. - WHERE18BD Broadway Centre Cinemas V, SLC
Tue. Jan 20 8:30 p.m. - WHERE20PN Prospector Square Theatre, Park City
Sat. Jan 24 6:00 p.m. - WHERE24EE Egyptian Theatre, Park City