Printed Matter

"Printed Matter" displays the conflation of private lives and contemporary geopolitics. The evidence comes from Brutmann's father, André, who was, up to his untimely death in 2002, a freelance press photographer covering two decades of Middle East news for local newspapers as well as for International, mostly European, print media. HIs voluminous collection offers a visual chronicle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that consists of surprisingly familiar images of civil dissent, armed violence, funeral grief and political speeching in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.

After becoming a dad in 1983 and finishing a day of work, with a few pictures left on the film role in his camera, this professional media worker would regularly photograph his daughter and wife, later a family of four. Printed Matter simply shows an exquisite selection of contact sheets including memorable events such as the First and Second Intifada, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin and the birth of Sirah Foighel Brutmann.

Instead of using formatted captions, the filmmakers choose for the impromptu voice comment by the first witness to these histories: Hanne Foighel, André’s partner and freelance journalist, reminisces on the past while browsing through its records and getting her memory triggered. As if it were a fragile time capsule steered by her provident off-screen voice, Printed Matter takes its viewers on a still yet penetrating excursion into the intimacies of political history and the politics of intimate lives.

"Printed Matter" is distributed by Auguste Orts and by the EYE film institute.