The festival film’s solution for testimony from unidentified subjects.
Hanawon
Romain Champalaune, 2019, Netherlands
genre: testimonial
About Finnish Manhood
Samuli Salonen, 2019, Finland
genre: testimonial
I have recently seen a number of films in which testimonial comes anonymously, for those whose identity needs to be protected or for those who would not be as forthcoming without anonymity. Of course, this practice has a long tradition in popular and auteur documentary. (For instance, da Antonio’s use of backs to camera in Underground). But I’ve been wondering if the festival documentary puts any particular spin on anonymity.
Hanawon, a short about South Korea’s assimilation education for defectees from North Korea. The defectee testimonials are laid over poetic-doc footage of contemporary South Korea. Thematically, the film delves into similar thematic territory as the longer character-driven doc Camp 14: Total Control Zone. Fornmally, its model is one of sound-image juxtaposition. The testimonial ironizes what we see and the space between the two opens up the emotional tension between two versions of social reality.
About Finnish Manhood on the other might seem to be the same approach. Against testimonial of Finnish men talking about their difficulty discussing their feelings, Salonen places images of seemingly unrelated spaces. However, they often do have a metonymic relation to the men. (A sauna, a sports center, etc.) The effect is not entirely ironic but not entirely illustrative either.
in both examples, the festival documentary presses for images that do not depict those giving the testimony. It privileges a form in which viewers must make sense of the images and their relation to the testimony.