The Exposition of Anna Zharkov

Artist and film-maker Peter van Houten worked for five years on this experimental and artistic film about the inner life of a young woman, Anna, whose private life slowly but surely makes way for idealism and religion. The film is largely set in a clinic and the adjacent garden. Throughout Anna’s stay there, it becomes clear just what strange rituals she has imposed on herself and what causes them. Anna has an emotionally charged past. Both she and her Polish mother are obsessed by war, violence and their consequences for women. Her mother has dedicated her life to finding out the identity of anonymous Eastern European women in newspaper photos. The pregnant Anna is tormented by nightmares. The scenes in and around the clinic and Anna’s dreams and memories are juxtaposed with events at Anna’s home, where she has two children. In the meantime, a special yet doomed relationship develops in the clinic between the young woman and Leonore, one of the nurses. Much of the film was re-shot a second time from a monitor, for which the director developed a special camera. In addition, Van Houten thought of a way to filter the images of Anna’s memories and re-scanned them to make the newly created images reminiscent of paintings. These technical and artistic innovations resulted in a powerful, original and very personal film idiom.