Now It Was Just Make Believe, Video diary for 2 screens, 26 min, colour sound, 2011
Now It Was Just Make Believe and: is a film diary exploring the psychological and emotional dimensions of leaving one's home country and building a life elsewhere. The work adopts a collaborative approach to filmmaking, drawing on shared filmmaking practices in which participants become both subjects and creators of their own narratives.
Conceived as a two-screen video installation, the work can also be experienced as a standalone film. It emerged from an archive of video diary footage collected over four years.
The film brings together participants at different stages of life, from childhood to adulthood, who engage in conversations, film one another and reflect on the emotional complexities, challenges and transformations associated with their experiences of migration and belonging in Sweden.
Running through the work is a reflection on the relationship between utopia as an imagined possibility and utopia as a constructed reality, questioning the tensions between expectations, aspirations and lived experience.
HDV, colour, sound, 26 min, 2011.