Art Camp Lazarea, Romania, 2019
Experimental short film, color, sound, 25 min
In the short experimental film A Traveller’s Land, I document my journey from a Western European city to a village in eastern Transylvania, Romania. While the visual narrative follows the train journey from West to East, the passing landscapes and even the interiors of the trains reveal cultural and economic disparities between two Western and two Eastern EU countries. At the same time, the voiceover narration takes us through the same countries but in the opposite direction, from East to West, offering insight into the biographical story of an artist born in Romania who now resides in a Western European city.
The juxtaposed layers play with the notion of time and space, and emergence of fluid identities within them. The clash of temporal patterns and the narration raise questions such as: What is forward, and what is backward? or How do cultural norms and economic frameworks influence personal decisions and reflect in transnational biographies?
tonka malekovic 