"I Told Them My Camera Was On" version 1 (2004) at 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

I Told Them My Camera Was On is a self-conscious narrative game re-constructing my own video diaries between 1990 and 2004, from VHS, hi-8 to mini-DV. It looks for a structure that would hold together 13 women found in my footage. It subverts causal narrative logic and shows 13 women’s stories as a network of acquaintances, each in an isolated moment of her life, thus questioning the necessity of an epic approach. Instead, a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds is invented. Standard theses on cultural differences and identities, realities of growing up and growing old etc. become ambiguous. Questions on the practice of auto-ethnography are raised via “the politics of the everyday.” The construction of a network of acquaintances, with me in the centre, is based on the rule of playful chain-connectivity. I show each woman in an isolated moment of her life, thus questioning the necessity of an epic approach and structuralist depth-hermeneutics. Instead, a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds is invented.

I Told Them my Camera Was On plays with the thin line between remembering and fabricating, recording and staging, and document and story. It mocks the “standard” narrative of a woman’s life-story by inventing a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds. Assumed theses on cultural differences and identities, realities of growing up and growing old etc. become ambiguous.