My Life in the Sunshine (Film)

2021, 16mm film (digital transfer), 5‘25 minutes, color, sound
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An exploration on how people portray themselves and the world they live in through Instagram Stories. The film invites ten young women and men from Geneva, and second generation immigrants to re-enact their own Stories in front of a 16mm camera. The work focuses on the ways in which they shape their environment –from the products they consume to the pop cultural references they cite– to create a space of dreaming where their social identities, cultural backgrounds and diasporic biographies emerge. While using the montage techniques offered by the app, such as the alternation between photos and moving images, short and abrupt cuts, or the sporadic use of music, the change of medium challenges the modes of self-expression: if the mirror function of the phone‘s display allows taking the best selfie and ultimately having absolute control over one‘s image, the lens of the analog camera offers no such possibilities. Collaboration with Mounira Mokhtar