The Bear Garden
by Audrea Leuteneker, UWM, 16 mm, 17 minutes
In The Bear Garden Leuteneker investigates her own origin, family and identity. The memory of personal upbringing merges with the memory of recent German history – the Holocaust – inextricably set in the stunning but troubling beauty of the south German landscape. The land, the lakes, the mountains and caves become a backdrop for an intense and scrupulous journey into the past and its meaning. Removed from real-time and sharply focused images, the projected film conveys the feeling of a changing, large scale canvas. Chemically eroded and altered film surfaces feel like ectoplasmic atmosphere, distant voices and visitors rummage through rocks and haunt empty halls and country roads. In an archaeology of vision, the film’s powerful and enigmatic imagery bears witness to the search for an understanding of the unspeakable.