Director: François Caillat
France, color, 2004, 75’
French with Turkish subtitles

A filmmaker travels through the mountain villages along the shores of Alpine lakes to investigate the disappearance of Valérie 20 years ago. She allegedly murdered a Canadian tourist before disappearing without a trace. At least that is how the narrator remembers the story, while passing through the region at the time. Over the course of the interviews, the elusive Valérie seems to disappear a second time, literally engulfed by the Alpine landscape, magnificently captured on film by François Caillat. A haunting, imposing landscape, where chasms and precipices become metaphors, characters in a work of fiction that the camera turns into a documentary. It is a film in the form of an essay in which the director takes his work on memory to its highest degree of abstraction.

L'affaire Valerie

L'affaire Valerie

Trois Soldats Allemands

Trois Soldats Allemands

La Quatrieme Generation

La Quatrieme Generation

Une Jeunesse Amoureuse

Une Jeunesse Amoureuse

Memory of Objects

Memory of Objects

In his book exploring the cultural history of souvenirs, Rolf Potts discusses how such objects assume meaning through personal stories: Objects turn into memories with the stories they hold.

Return from Vienna

Return from Vienna

Józef Brandt harboured a fascination for the history of 17th century Poland, and his favourite themes included ballistic scenes and genre scenes before and after the battle proper –all and sundry marches, returns, supply trains, billets and encampments, patrols, and similar motifs illustrating the drudgery of warfare outside of its culminating moments.

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was born on July 10, 1888, in Volos, Greece, to an Italian family. His mother, Gemma Cervetto, was from a family of Genoa origin, but most likely she was born in Izmir. His father, Evaristo, was born on June 21, 1841 in the Büyükdere district of Istanbul.