September 24, 2020 18:30
Missing Time
Missing Time
15 min., 2019
Director:
Morgan Quaintance
‘Nationhood and selfhood — concepts maintained through memory. Withdrawal of key memories or histories lead to a distorted conception of the self or the nation’
Quote from the Missing Time.
Missing Time is about memory and its loss, about historical, personal and national memory and self-perception. The film merges two powerful and vivid stories, which are not told directly but whose meanings and impact are observed from the relative distance of today in black and white imagery. One of the film’s storylines is inspired by an account of an American biracial couple from the 1970s, Betty and Barney Hills. The couple claimed that they had been abducted by the aliens –– it was the first widespread story of alien abductions in the US. In cooperation with the National Security Agency, they were plunged into intense hypnosis sessions to delve into the wife’s dreams. Throughout the film, it remains unclear what exactly has happened, but the photographs and the woman’s voice convey their strong experiences. The second visual storyline emerging at this historical moment –– archival footage of British colonial history and concentration camps in Kenya –– creates an interaction resulting in a powerful metaphor questioning history, other people’s and other countries’ dreams, the powerful methods of managing people’s thoughts and memories and a strong feeling of love between two people.
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