Safe Waters (Sichere Gewässer) (2020)

Title: Safe Waters (Sichere Gewässer)
Year: 2020
Category: video / essay / film
Duration: 9:00 min
Tech: digital video, HD, color, sound
Audio: English
Subtitles: none, German

Concept, Script and Editing: Anna Barbieri
Additional Video Material: Anna Barbieri
Voice-Over: Anna Barbieri
Archive Material: "Neuguinea Papua" by Adele Kraft, "1981" by Siglinde Kurz
Sound Mixing: Sebastian Meyer

This project was realised in cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, which provided the archive material from its collection.

Based on a one and a half minute long sequence taken from the film “Papua Neu-Guinea” by Adela Kraft, which is part of the Amateur*innen-Film-Collection of the Austrian Film Museum, Safe Waters is an essayistic reflection deciphering vacation enclaves and resorts as imperialist and colonial outposts that serve as architectural agents of western hegemony.

Caught between innocent contemplation, constructed duplications, hidden barriers, and intentional taming, the short-film complicates the gesture of showing and highlighting amateur film-making practice. It distorts the artificially created, standardised self-reflections of western power and unfolds an intersectional perspective on tourist fantasies, fictions, and all associated image productions.