Listings(s)
The Hottest Day of the Year
Keren Cytter at STEVENSON in Cape TownKeren Cytter's video The Hottest Day of the Year is part of the FOREX series. Filmed partly in South Africa, the film uses the tradition of the romantic anthropological documentary to make an argument about the present.
The first part of Cytter's 'documentary' tells the story of the imaginary Anne-Marie Baptist, born in 1917 in France. This section follows a logical narrative recounting Baptist's escape to Paris during World War II and subsequent travel to South Africa to find the mythical location of a Khoi and San battle. After approximately 10 minutes the second part of the film begins, shifting to another narrator and set of circumstances set in the Israeli Defence Force. The second chapter is connected to the first one by association. The mythical location Anne-Marie Baptist searched for in Africa was cursed a long time ago: at this place, all actions lose their meaning.
Cytter was inspired by Chris Marker's monumental film Sans Soleil (1983) as well as the work of Vietnamese theoretician and filmmaker Trinh T Minh-ha. In their documentaries and travel reports, both directors are concerned with colonialism.
08 September 2011 - 15 October 2011
