The Sun and the Looking Glass + An Unusual Summer – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Milena Desse’s film essay is a story of two old-Ottoman houses in a small village in the West Bank occupied since 1967. Using a magnifying glass, the director examines objects uncovered during the renovation of the houses. The processes of exposure and disappearance are the main motifs in the history of land and people subjected to colonial appropriation for decades.

Year 2006. Due to repeated acts of vandalism in front of the director’s family house, his father decides to install a camera. With it, he records the life of the Arab neighbourhood in the Israeli town of Ramla: the everyday choreography of the street, the relations between neighbours, the joyful and the painful moments. After his father’s death, the director transfers the camera recordings into an à dispositif film, inviting us to participate in a personal and political séance with a reality that has passed away.