I dedicated my video to the camera and the body. I tried to tell my own story about a body trapped in chaos, silence, pain and helplessness. And about a camera that helped me free my body and find my authentic language.

Directed by Andrejka Skračić

Cast: Vana

Director Statement:

As the title suggests, I dedicated my video to the camera and the body.
As a girl, and later as a woman, I lived in a patriarchal environment, where I was often abused physically, mentally and emotionally. The pain I experienced resulted in a trauma that made me feel alienated from my own body. This helped me to survive, but not to live a full life. Consequently, as a grown-up person, I fell into a deep existential crisis. Fortunately, 30 years ago, I was handed a camera by pure accident, and at that moment the process of liberation began within me. Today I symbolically end it with this video. In just under four minutes, I tried to tell my story of liberating the body using a camera that has served me as a medium of expression and creation.
The trauma I experienced made me feel frozen, paralyzed and alienated from my own self, hence the starting scene shows a female body lying wrapped in rope. Her movement is limited, restrained, unfree, breathing short and shallow, in agony. Her space is cramped, time seems to have stopped, the hands of the clock barely move forward, breathing is restless, painful, lost in the chaos of sounds. I used the sounds that stifle our nature most: traffic, selfie-digital technology, television, shopping malls, bureaucratic machinery, hard breathing as a result of abuse… Colors are washed out, almost black and white. The body suffers, convulses and loses its strength.

At the crucial moment, She is handed a camera and her body jerks. It is the initiating moment when She begins to take life into her own hands. Now the shots start to change (objective / subjective view). Her subjective shots are restless, insecure and vertical at first, but as the body slowly frees more and more, from lying down to upright, so the shots get longer, more stable, have more perspective, and are eventually horizontal, calm, while the process of the body goes in the opposite direction – it rises, breathes with full lungs, the colors return, the voices of nature suppress unnatural sounds… The last sound is the original sound from the recording: the crickets sing out loud. In the end, the body stands firmly on the ground, the camera makes a 360-degree circle, the space expands in all directions, time spins again. She is holding her life in her hands and is self-confident again.

The last frame is diametrically opposed to the first frame. Not only liberated, the body is now vital, joyful and transcendent. Now She breathes with full lungs, the colors are natural. In the last frame, we see Her climbing a vertical rock, while the rope makes her safe and connected to people.

Although an experienced trauma may have serious harmful effects, making it hard to rebuild one’s life, this video attempts to show that it is possible to start over. I hope that it also raises awareness across the community, that traumatized people having issues deserve support instead of stigma and that female body deserves dignity, integrity and freedom.