Output details

The Border Crossing

Set in the Basque country, Daniels' most recent film extends her long-standing concerns with place and identity into the theory/practice of reflexive autobiographical documentary. Grounded in 'memory work' (Kuhn 1995) and in Daniels' reflections on continuing influences including Akerman, The Border Crossing's experiment in documentary works across borders, interrogating relations between autobiography, place and traumatic memory. The film's form assumed its shape during a research journey of discovery to the location of a violent attack Daniels suffered many years ago. Informed by research into traumatic temporality and the traumatic past's 'absolute discontinuity' from the present (Greene 2000: 247), the film's soundtrack juxtaposes the voice of a speaking 'I' located in the present with the voice of a girl, Siân, representing that 'I's' younger self. Between them these voices explore memories of a journey, reflecting on the fragility of memory and the continuing affects of violence and loss. Research into theories of traumatic realism (Rothberg 2000; White 1996) inform the film's deferral of narrative closure as a means to encourage reflection on the unreliability of memory and the nature of the past. As research, the film’s positioning between the personal and the social, fiction and documentary, realism and reflexive enactment aims to produce new knowledge of the discontinuities between past and present and to explore gendered subjectivity at the interface of personal and the social. This film was part-funded through Daniels' film production company, High Ground Films Ltd. UEL awarded the film £2,000 (through its early career researcher fund) and the filmdirecting4women film festival awarded materials to an approximate value of £4,000.