JOHN DI STEFANO
YOU ARE HERE [2010]
Single-channel digital video | 01:02:00 | Black-&-white & Color | Stereo | English, Italian, French (w/ English subtitles) |4:3
VIEW: https://vimeo.com/74625750
YOU ARE HERE is an essayistic film about the search for home within an era of transnational displacement. Elaborating on his familial immigrant narrative, the film chronicles the filmmaker’s trajectory from his ancestral home in Italy, to his native Canada and beyond, to suggest alternative and complementary spaces and geographies of belonging. What emerges is a critically reflective and meditative contemporary examination of history and the complex nuances of orientations and affiliations. At the core of the film is a personal quest. As the son of immigrants, the artist examines shifting notions of home and belonging within the context of his ethnic origins, but also extending into the realm of national and sexual identities and affiliations. The film uses photographic images from the family archive to suggest that, aside from the home itself, there may be alternative and complementary spaces that emerge as sites of belonging.Stylistically, this work falls within the tradition of the 'essay film' by filmmakers such as Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Agnes Varda and Jonas Mekas.
OFFICIAL COMPETITIONS
Festival International du Documentaire. Official International Competition Marseille, France [2010]
Festival International du Documentaire. Media Library Prize Competition. Marseille, France [2010]
Documentary Edge Film Festival, Official Competition. New Zealand [2010]
SHOWN [selected]
Strom Kunstfestival, Kunsthaus Rheniana, Cologne, Germany [2013]
LÅNTrum (film series), Osramhuset, Copenhagen, Denmark [2013]
Poetics & Politics of Documentary Conference, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland [2013]
Santorini Biennale of Art, Greece [2012]
Dialogues in Contemporary Video Art, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan [2012]
Videonale - Contemporary Video Art, Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany [2011]
Video Re:view, BWA Contemporary Art Gallery. Katowice, Poland [2011]
Festival International du Documentaire, Marseille, France [2010]
New Filmmakers - Anthology Film Archives, New York [2010]
Human Rights Film Festival, Sarajevo [2010]
Documentary Edge Film Festival, New Zealand [2010]
New Zealand Film Archive [2009]
DISTRIBUTION
Video Data Bank (Chicago) www.vdb.org
V-Tape (Toronto) www.vtape.org




