Program 7

Short film program consisting of:

THE TIME THAT SEPARATES US
NO STRANGER AT ALL

Total running time approx. 75 min.

The Time That Separates Us

THE TIME THAT SEPARATES US circles the story of Lot’s wife and its related sites of mythology, ancient salt-rock formations found doubled across a contested border, overlooking the Dead Sea. Geologists speculate that they were created by an underwater volcanic eruption, the same phenomenon that destroyed the historical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Concurrently, the biblical narrative for this geological event tells of a community punished for their deviant sexuality—while Lot’s wife disobeys her condition for salvation, turns back to witness the destruction, and is instantly transformed into a pillar of salt.
In the film the Pillar of Salt becomes a portal through which to face the contemporary Jordan River Valley, its heavily militarized border and complex infrastructures of tourism, and the stigmatized realms of desire encoded within this highly mediated political landscape. The script was formed through a series of collective writing exercises that often took place along the Jordan River and around the key sites of the film. Through this process the group found ways to speak of geology, politics, and sexuality, using a language that acknowledged the contradictory symbolism of these sites while allowing for gaps in meaning, in which empathy and organic intelligence could operate.

No Stranger at All

“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present.
The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who turns out, is no stranger at all.” Priya Sen