Visages & voyages Runa Islam

Inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman and others, Runa Islam takes as her point of departure a place, a sequence of scenes or technical analysis borrowed from the history of film. She challenges the traditional narrative process of film by deconstructing it to create her completely new interpretations. Runa Islam explores moments and elements of tension at the point where something is just about to happen: displacement in time and space, symbol-laden landscapes and places, psychological reactions and physical presence, glances and thoughts. Moments are frozen in time and the focus is shifted to everyday situations in combination with dreamlike states allowing for the exploration of the limits of the language of film. This is seen in her early work Tuin (16 mm, 1998), for instance, where she re-works Rainer Werner Fassbinder's famous 360 degree shot from Martha, to expose the construction of the making of the film and show exactly what, as well as who, is involved in the process. The symbolic name of the exhibition – Visages & Voyages – refers to the French words for faces and journeys as well as to the process of filmmaking, with references to the classic techniques of close-ups and longshots.