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Film still from DEAREST FIONA: Old image of a family on a wooden pontoon. In the distance, we see a mill and some houses. The clothes, the vegetation and the water are hand colored. The rest is in black and white.

Sun 11.06.
11:15

  • Director

    Fiona Tan

  • Netherlands / 2023
    100 min. / DCP / Original version with German subtitles

  • Cinema

    Arsenal 1

    zu den Ticketszu dem Kalender
  • Introduction: Mark Paul Meyer (Eye Filmmuseum)

In the collection of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, Fiona Tan researched silent, documentary archive material predating the 1920s. The material she found there depicts everyday life and above all the hard work only slowly being made easier by machines. Tan, who is of Indonesian descent, came to Amsterdam from Australia to study in 1988. During this period, Tan’s father sent her letters in which he vividly reflects on private affairs, global politics and the competition between economic systems. The combination of these letters read out in voiceover with archival material creates a kind of audiovisual stream of consciousness—heightened by the artful soundtrack—that is open to associations, coincidences and the discovery of subtle connections: between image and sound, then and now, the Netherlands and Indonesia, trade and colonialism, father and daughter.

DEAREST FIONA was screened in the Berlinale Forum program in 2023. More information about the film can be found here.

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media