When Light Behaves Differently Towards Time

The films of Jan Willem van Dam – strictly speaking they are videos these days – have a very special place in the expanding area between fiction and documentary. `The protagonists play their own roles, just as this is expected of them in real life,’ according to the maker. When Light Behaves Differently Towards Time was filmed in Georgia, in the period after the Rose Revolution. Nini Sardlishvili (16) talks about her life and dreams. She describes how, at the age of three, she was taken from her bed by an unknown man, who took her out and showed her the world. The next morning, Nini is back home and her mother finds cigarette ash on her pillow. ‘It was both strange and beautiful,’ according to Nini. It is Gocha Ovashvili, agent of the Georgian Internal Security Service, who shows us Georgia. Against the background of the enchanting landscape of the Caucasian republic, he meets the local people during his hunt for criminals and talks to them about the hard struggle that is their everyday life. While the lyrical and the timeless are both predominant – as is usual with Van Dam – the images he ‘finds’ are sometimes alarming and topical. We hear about Russian bombardments in the Chechen border area and about Abkhazian slave traders, we see burned-out Soviet archives and the population decline in mountain villages. In the meantime, Nini Sardlischvili works hard on her own future. (GT)

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