It is only in retrospect that awareness dawns, that the film, consisting of amateur footage, is an archive of collective Western clichés
of exotic otherness. Geographical nonsense now dancing to another tune. Souvenirs of place at a time when it is customary to bring home photos instead
of silk, Super 8 instead of spices.  These
nuggets of personal memory are culled from over sixty hours of film and stand witness to a way of seeing, a white model of perceiving the world and its
unspoken hierarchies. The visual level is an invitation to indulge in the opulence of the exotic, but the enjoyment is not without its intentionally
located visual irritations. These are present explicitly in the form of the waving tourist, the woman who blocks our ‘view’ with her film camera, the
man who interrupts an event to photograph his future memory, and implicitly when the women cover themselves from our intruding gaze. Our voyeurism is
further unmasked as we watch the figures on their knees shuffling forward on their personal pilgrimages of guilt and supplication.
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 In
the context of déjà vu the naive pleasure of collecting the wonders of the world is assigned an additional meaning.
At the outset of the film, the sound effects work together with the images, enhancing their documentary character and colluding with
the quasi-narrative flow. It is worth bearing in mind that we are dealing here with cinematographic sound - approximations and outright falsities which
have an authentic ring to them. Aural tricks and sleight of hand ascription (the-all-big-ships-must-sound-their-horn-in-the-harbour syndrome) we  mutually
agree to treat as reality. The courtship does not last very long. In many places it is punctured by something approaching unsettling irony. Two examples.
A shot from the railing of a ship ploughing through southern seas. Sacred choral music wells up from the soundtrack. It has an emotional impact that
sends a shiver down your spine. At the same time as it functions as ‘film music’, it has a narrative function and communicates significant information.
The associations are manifold. |
