Films by Vanessa Nica Mueller

2023, 64 min
by Vanessa Nica Mueller

"Jamais vu is the opposite of déjà vu, a place which seems known appears strange, unknown and new. A scenery which seems familiar appears alienated, she heard."An essay about Lebanon (mainly) and Germany (also), about coastlines and plants like the marsh samphire, the milk thistle, the angel trumpet or the crimson bottlebrush. About adaptation and transformation as well as resistance, about changes desired and dreaded, the city of Beirut and its unexpected revelations, modernism and time passing by, and, of course, the hopes and fears of its inhabitants, many of whom sense that their future might wait for them across the sea, even if they don’t want to leave.All of this is presented in a wonderful collage-like narrative style that mixes and integrates different materials and techniques, as if to illustrate the following observation: "The microbiologist and evolution scientist Lynn Margulis developed in the 1960s the theory that evolution is mostly based on symbiosis and cooperation between organisms. She was a strong opponent of Darwin and his survival of the fittest theory. What she was observing in her field of microbiology strongly supports her alternative theory of evolution." [52 IFFR, Olaf Möller]

Germany 2011
by Vanessa Nica Mueller

TRACES OF AN ELEPHANT is a reflection on different attitudes towards the film ELEPHANT directed by Alan Clarke (Belfast, 1989). It features a number of interviews that deal with Clarke's controversial television drama. Along with their personal memories of the film, the interview partners also reminisce about the structural changes in the city of Belfast during the past twenty years - a cinematic reflection on the medium of film as such and on the troubles in Northern Ireland. The documentary approach and the intensity of Clarke's fictional film coalesce. Interviews with Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell, Daniel Jewesbury, Lindsey Mitchell, Ryan Moffett, Derville Quigley, Duncan Ross and Stephen Wood