Facing Forward (1999)

Genre :

Runtime : 10M

Director : Fiona Tan

Synopsis

In reframing and re-editing existing ethnographic films, Tan exposes their anthropological underpinnings and questions the conventions of filmmaking. What is the relationship between the observer and the observed? How can one ever know another? The voice-over, a fictional dialogue taken from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, may offer an answer. The explorer Marco Polo and Emperor Kublai Khan are speaking about travel and looking back on the past, when Polo observes, “The traveler recognises the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”

Actors

Owen Oppenheimer
Owen Oppenheimer
Narrator

Crews

Fiona Tan
Fiona Tan
Director
Fiona Tan
Fiona Tan
Editor
Hugo Dijkstal
Hugo Dijkstal
Sound Designer

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