Lost in Space

2005 | 17mins | Colour
Directed by Mieke Bal & Shahram Entekhabi

Genre: Documentary
Multi-lingual with English subtitles

The problem of communication in a world of displacement

When asked in English what he missed most about being away from home, an Iranian long-term asylum seeker burst into his native Farsi and said that, of all the things he sorely missed, the primary thing was his language. This remark triggered the aesthetic of this experimental film.

The film tears apart the different manifestations of language. First, in an extensive credit sequence, all speakers are shown saying what they say in the film. But only their mouths and hands speak; no voice is heard, only street noise. When the film proper begins, we hear the voices and see, in yet a different manifestation of speech, the translated utterances in screen-filling typescript.

The discrepancy between what we see, read, and hear addresses the problem of language in the contemporary world of displacement. Like that world, language is out of sync.

Lost in Space appeared at the following:

  • 10th International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, Jihlava, Czech Republic, October 2006
  • 19th Annual Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, Vtape, Toronto, April 15 – May 27, 2006; October 24–29, 2006
  • MASS MoCA Museum for Contemporary Arts, North Adams, MA, April 8, 2006
  • International Contemporary Art Experts Forum (ARCO), Madrid, February 10, 2006
  • “BEOGRAD NEKAD I SAD” exhibition, Galerija Beograd, Belgrade, September – October 2005

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