An Open Window
Short Films and Mid-Lengths
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51m
Directed by Khady Sylla | 52 mins | 2005
After an unsatisfactory attempt to make a film about the numerous mentally ill people who filled the streets of Dakar back in 1994, Sylla, in her own words “fell ill and crossed to the other side, seeing what others don’t see.” Now “living the experience from the inside,” Sylla produced "An Open Window," an empathetic portrait of her friend, Aminta Ngom, suffering under the burden of unspecified emotional disorder, and also a gesture of solidarity through self-exposure by Sylla, who is remarkably forthright about her own struggles, at one point dumping a mountain of prescription drug bottles from her purse on camera. A rigorous, conscientious interrogation of the dynamics between observed and observer, and a film about madness quite unlike any other.
Up Next in Short Films and Mid-Lengths
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A Single Word
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Begun by Sylla and completed by her sister, Mariama, after Khady’s death in 2013, "A Single Word" connects the essay film to the oral historical tradition of the griots—West African storytellers, musicians, and poets who act as repositori... -
At Home But Not At Home
Directed by Suneil Sanzgiri | 11 mins | 2019
Combining excerpts from India’s Parallel Cinema movement, 16mm drone footage, and family Skype interviews, Sanzgiri’s film recounts an unorthodox history of various interlocked anti-colonial liberation movements as seen at a mediated distance, using hi... -
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Directed by Jérémy Clapin | 9 mins | 2004
Clapin’s first short is a game of Tetris as much as it is a love story. It centers on a man whose spine bends at a striking right angle: his eyes can gaze only downwards, his hat perched on the back of his head. The appearance of a woman whose back bends ...
