Film Review | Longstories

Take My Pictures for Me (2016) dir. Amahl Bishara and Mohammad

The documentary opens with a phone call with Musa asking, “Why don‘t you take pictures for me?” What follows is an experiment in shared visual expression. However, while visual representation is exchanged, the embodied experiences—marked by mobility restrictions and differential rights—are not.

The title, “Taking My Pictures for Me,” presents a paradox for no one can truly see through another’s eyes. Yet, the film addresses this paradox more of a question of biopolitics—how state control can limit one’s ability to tell their own story.

In scene (11:00), Musa asks Amahl to photograph the hospital where he was treated after being shot. What the camera captures, however, are images of flowers, cats-a visual metaphor for the irreconcilable gap between Musa’s lives and the images of aesthetic tranquility. This scene was soon juxtaposed with Musa's word: “When I was there, it was really different.” he was shackled, around by soldiers. This is the moment I feel how words creates greater emotional resonance than visuals—a reflection of how sight itself can be a privilege, tied to mobility and political power. While film often relies on visuals and sound to complement each other, this scene reveals their dissonance: the spoken word stands in against to the static unreality of the visual.

At the 18-minute, the film takes a change with a shaky vertical frame and limited angles. It invites reflection on how formal cinematic aesthetics—stable frames, varied angles—are often rooted in secure positions of privilege.

At 23 minutes, when Amahl shares photos of Musa’s former home, the harmony is disrupted by the statement, “All of this photography is for nothing.” Here, the physical presence of photographs contrasts with the loss of the home. Photos, often seen as repositories of memory, are powerless in the face of lived political realities.

This disconnection perhaps points to the very nature of photographs and films: they are incomplete but resonant. It allows us to see others’ stories while raising the question of what is missing—reminds viewers of the ethical responsibility of witnessing.

Watching this 2016 documentary, I think about what’s happening in Gaza today. History repeats itself in cycles of violence and resistance. Could visual repatriation prompt a critical reappraisal of how we represent and understand these intertwined histories? Could it empower communities to reclaim their agency and voice in narratives?

Sans Soleil (1983) dir. Chris Marker

At the end of this documentary, I forgot what it previously said. Several images, arranged in montage, when I was trying to think about, invade my memories, becoming my own. Have I truly been to Tokyo, Guinea-Bissau, or Iceland? If not, but I have seen them in this documentary. This blending of memory and reality blurs the distinction between mere seeing and being there in person. They all become part of my past, memories I can revisit occasionally.

Sans Soleil is represented in form of letter. A woman with no name read the letters she received. What strikes me is its exploration of temporality- an inherent characteristic of letter communication. Letters bridge time and space, creating an interval between writing and reading. Letters inherently encompass multiple temporalities: the moment of writing (past), the act of reading (present), and the anticipated response (future). Such complexity is highlighted by the last sentence from this documentary : “Will there be a last letter?”, extending a hope towards uncertain future. Given this letter form, time is no longer linear, reminding me of Bergson's idea on duration.

Sans Soleil seems to be a work of duration, woven from memory. In Introduction to Metaphysics (1946), Bergson describes “inner duration” as the continuous life of memory, bringing the past into the present. Memory fuses the entirety of one's past with each new present moment, like snow accumulating on a snowball rolling downhill. The past, in a virtual state, coexists with the present, ready to be recalled. This sense of duration is visualized through Marker's montage—images from 1965 to 1980, spanning Japan, Guinea, Africa, and France, from ferries to cats to subway stations to a giraffe. Fragments of the past leap into the present, only to dissolve again into memory, awaiting recollection. These fleeting images collectively shape a durational experience. The montage itself—juxtaposing disparate elements like everyday life in Tokyo against scenes from Guinea-Bissau-initially suggests a contrast, perhaps invoking a tension between “modern” and “traditional” lives. But does linking them together defy what Fabian (2002) terms the “denial of coevalness”? Through montage, rather than merely documenting what “already exists,” Marker reimagines these spaces, crafting new connections and associations. He envisions possibilities and the multiplicity of human worlds, suggesting, as Mclean (2015) puts it, “the prospect of unpredictable and mutually transformative encounters between spatially and temporally disparate people, places and things.”

Within this durational montage, where is the impetus? At this point, I would talk more about the details of this documentary. One quote says: “And beneath each of these faces a memory. And in place of what we were told had been forged into a collective memory, a thousand memories of men who parade their personal laceration in the great wound of history. ” (62ish minutes) The tension between individual memory and collective history resonates throughout the film .On one hand, the documentary focuses on the minutiae of life, its camera capturing trivial, transient moments, sometimes in shaky, hurried shots. It reminds me of the feeling, when I was new to a place, driven by curiosity, capture the trivial but interesting moment, but the attention soon being directed to other stuffs. Such an approach could feel “touristic” or distanced, as though viewing an unfamiliar culture through a detached lens. Yet, Marker’s humanistic reflections on history help bridge the rupture created by this distance, allowing the camera to be introspective. In this way, Marker also turns eye over politicians, colonial wars, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima. He writes about the danger of being forgotten and the subtle ways these historical memories ghostly permeate daily life. Can Marker's focus on everyday banality against the larger collective historical consciousness let us rethink about their relations? Would it therefore creating rupture breaking up the continuity that is constructed between past and present, allowing glimpses of the alternatives of both past and future? As Neumann notes the past holds a “disturbing ambiguity, its irrelevance for the emergence of the present and its potential relevance for our image of a future not necessarily contained in the present”. (1992, p.9)

I first watched this film on a Chinese media platform; certain scenes were deliberately obscured. Only through comments did I realize these black scenes were censored, covering moments of sexual content or references to Japanese politics. I don’t know which versions will I remember later—a memory perhaps altered, fragmented, or covered up by censorship, leaving its own trace in the unfolding duration of Sans Soleil.