Echolocation

Try as we might to pin it down, memory has a way of slipping into flux. For decades, cinema has provided the means and method for recollection; filmmakers have contended with personal, historical and mythic memory in order to reach deeper understanding. The way we remember, both individually and collectively, is tightly bound to the purported truth of the archive; whether it be a box of photos found in a family member's attic, a piece of microfiche in a library, or a series of letters unearthed and read for the first time in decades. In Echolocation, this archive is personal and bravely vulnerable.

“The rain in Oakland, my grandmother's home in Baghdad, my aunts' voices in What's App, my daughter learning to count to 10, my brother playing the darbuka, the cicadas in Texas, the walls of my studio, the search for new forms.” Director Nadia Shihab arranges these elements of her life and home(s) poetically, seeking to better understand her lineage and its effects in the present. Shihab models what it means to engage with personal archives in expansive, generative ways—to allow for greater knowledge of ourselves as we burst forth into the future, continually in motion with the material of our past.

 

Sarah Bakke
Director of Development and Special Programs
DOXA Documentary Film Festival