OFFoff x Ursula - Guest: Barbara Meter

The film has elements of documentary, narrative and avant-garde. In a big house a party is taking place. People arrive and greet each other – encounters, some dancing, flirtations, a moment of drama. The camera is looking while slowly approaching the lit windows as if someone wanting to take part.

Alexandra is a film made almost entirely out of stills. The camera circles around a woman standing on a balcony in Walden 7 while gradually closing in. When the daylight fades, the camera stands on the verge of touching her skin. It’s only through the sequence of these stills, that it becomes clear she is standing there watching the sunset. 

“I was introduced to the Walden flat in Barcelona by Alexandra, a resident of the building. Because I was not allowed to wander through the hallways alone, she guided me on every subsequent visit. Shadowing me when I filmed, always a few meters behind, watching me look at the building.” (Lydia Hannah Debeer)

Barbara Meter’s first experimental film. From outside, the handheld camera surreptitiously peers at life in the living rooms of nocturnal Amsterdam. Shots of lamp shades, plants, chairs, faces and pets. A poodle stares out of the window.

“From The Exterior is eight color minutes of spontaneous searching, looking at peoples lives through open-curtained windows, from the outside-in. The film moves, blinks, grasps (lyrically) at the fragments of (room) reality; patches of color, the edge of a plant, a man sitting camouflaged within his surroundings, blinking TV sets, etc. It’s a vision at un funny high-speed (shot at 8fps) of moments lost, passed too quickly for accurate memory-impact to be formed. Thus the film must be seen and reseen; people exist in a non-linear time, they just are. Their situations are, unobtrusively; simply, those of Giacometti-like existences, focussed on for moments only, then left to themselves. Gesture (the film-maker’s and the subjects’) becomes the form content of life and film. Sometimes existences overlap (physically through superimposition), as patches of shape in a defined space, specific yet timeless.” (Peter Gidal)

You Know What I Mean observes the entrance to a mosque in Saint Louis, Senegal. The audio, accompanied with subtitles, is a live conversation between two European citizens who reflect on the intensity of their experience and what they observe. The film is a raw document exposing the state of confusion, uncertainties and attempts at reconnection.

After eight years of feminist activism, Andante Ma Non Troppo was Meter’s first step back towards experimental film. The camera observes a street corner from a window in Meter’s house. Turkish women meet on the sidewalk outside. Children play, dogs walk by. The shots repeat, just as the actions recorded reoccur every day. The non-chronological shots are composed as in a song.

Where I lay my head to rest is a summary, a reverie, a confession. A personal account of how it feels to be a woman in this world. An exploration of the interior; psychological as well as material. The little life in the city, with all its obstacles, in all its beauty.

In Penelope, a state of waiting is depicted in long stretches of time going by. Penelope waiting years for Odysseus to return was a model for women, waiting for their men to come home from war, from the pub after work, from their mistresses… The voice of the woman is from a Hollywood film of the fifties.

“The voice of a woman, who we never get to see, talks to an invisible man about the frustrations of their lack of understanding. The woman’s voice was taken from a Hollywood film from the ​‘50s. Meter manipulated this recording, repeating it, fading it in and out, and varying its volume to denote the different degrees of female acceptance towards imposed roles of waiting and longing.” (Mónica Savirón)

During sunset some walkers pause at a sightseeing spot in a natural reserve. A spectacle of gazes takes place. The subjects of watching – the exemplary view of nature and the viewing camera – stay out of sight.