Lukasz Konopa
United Kingdom | 2011 | 6 min
Language : no dialogue
In an observation from dusk till dawn, After portrays the theatre of everyday life around Auschwitz. The director’s camera observes closely but unobtrusively what goes on within and outside the camp. Each situation is a carefully composed world of silence and solitude that resonates with unspoken words and feelings. Timelines merge: memory and present are interwoven in a frame where time stands still.
Auschwitz is not only the place where one of the most horrible crimes against humanity was perpetrated. It is also the place where mankind goes to remember and to mourn. It is an icon of a wound inflicted on history. Yet, another kind of life is to be found now in Auschwitz. In an observation spanning from dusk till dawn, After portrays the theatre of everyday life around the former extermination camp. The director’s camera observes closely but unobtrusively what goes on within and outside the camp. Each situation is a carefully composed world of silence and solitude that resonates with unspoken words and feelings. Every single detail, though haunted by the weight of history, is like a still life of loss, grief, and even hope. The observational approach allows the director to let the elements in the frame create their own rhythm without imposing a specific point of view from outside. Thus the film becomes an image of absence and loss. Different timelines begin to merge: memory and present are interwoven in a frame where time seems to stand still.
GIONA A. NAZZARO