Light Displacement

The starting point for this film were Meggy Rustamova’s many attempts to photograph a tree in Hiroshima, Japan. Aspects of war, escapism and fear are expressed in this audiovisual trip. The atomic bomb in Japan and the current nuclear threat between the US and North Korea is translated into the white, overexposed photographs, which fade into complete 'white-out' in the film. Although this place is loaded by the history of the bomb, this gesture of capturing a simple tree is an expression to the reconstruction and modernisation of a once demolished place. In sync this lonesome tree could be standing anywhere, whether it's in Brussels, Baghdad or Paris. Simultaneously the repeated efforts of capturing the tree as it naturally looks – with the beautiful sunlight and the variety of green colours – expresses the impossibility of perfectly capturing reality in a photograph. One can read this film as a politicization of aesthetics, where beauty is harmonised with truth.