Poetics of exile

The Unfamiliar Space of Waiting

Malaz Usta

Poetics of exile: the unfamiliar space of waiting is an exploration of a multitude of ways to convey the feelings of displacement in and through cinema and the other forms of arts including animation, poetry, gaming, CGI, and music, to generate a deeper understanding of the exilic experience. An exploration of the emotional state of waiting in uncertainty, alienation, loneliness, confusion, fear, fragmentation, time, family, and search for home. These questions come from a motivation to better understand, to reflect, and to reflect on this tension, and to understand the plethora of emotions attached to it. The self-critical research rejects the dominant narrative that simplifies and reinforces pre assumptions. It rather embraces the exilic contrapuntal way of thinking, prioritizing criticality and emphasizing on the specificity, and complexity of the subject matter. Having the diary, and the practice of diary making as one of its central elements, the research is extremely vulnerable, honest, and personal.

Letters from a land unfamiliar is one of the explorations of this research. A feature length film about the subject’s relationship with filmmaking, family, home, and exile. The film is seen from within the head of the filmmaker who explores his diary archive of writings, and footage to better understand and reflect on his experience while editing the film. The waves of footage, and writings, are entangled with the wind of memory, and crash with the ongoing alienated, ungrounded present, where what’s left from the grips of reality are being continuously lost. Escape to the imagined alternative world is a necessity infiltrated by the absurdity of the real world.

Maybe, time will pass. I click through the folders, today’s images, the images of this month, this long month, the footage of the month before, and the one before that. I jump from one day to another. There are the people around me, surrounding me, at that specific moment. I play that specific moment once again, twice, three, four times. I relive the feeling that I am unable to relive in reality. I relive it in my own reality. In the world that I’m building around me. Under my feet, there exists no floor, tiles made of thumbnails, of videos. I step on one, I jump to another. Above my head there exists no ceiling, no roof, no sky. No walls surround me, I replaced them. I grew unattached to walls, I learned to deal with walls as mere walls. I learned that walls go down, and are rebuilt, and destroyed, once, twice, three, four times. What stays are the images, I found out.

They nourish me, give me hope, happiness, time, they give me back time. I have control over those specific moments. Those specific moments. I can slow down, speed up, repeat, once, twice, three, four times. I remember to record those things so that I do not lose again. I remember to back up, today, tomorrow, and the day after that. I remind myself over and over to back up into two, three, four drives. And I record all the time, specific moments, glimpses of the world that surround me. So long as I keep recording, moments will keep appearing, and time will pass, maybe. I lost trust with time increments, days, months, etc. I use those words as if I was programmed to use, I trust the moments, the recorded moments. I trust now, only now. The past only exists if I have recorded it, and if I could play it back. Maybe, if I keep rolling, time will pass.

Malaz Usta

Malaz Usta is a filmmaker, a designer and a visual artist, working with film, graphics, animation, editing, and sound. He was born in Damascus, Syria. He studied TV, and Cinema in Istanbul, and he obtained his Master’s of film: Artistic Research in and through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy. His works, which have been screened at major film festivals like IFFR, Ji.hlava, and Movies that Matter, deal with different issues of displacement, alienation, and ideas of belonging, identity, memory, and home. In his ongoing artistic research, he explores the poetics of exile, waiting and uncertainty through his use of personal diary, poetry, home video footage, 3D modeling, video archive, animation, and game engines. Through his works, Malaz tries to convey deeper understanding, explore emotions, and generate empathy by being personal, vulnerable, and engaging with the spectator other.

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