These Are Not My Images (neither there nor here)

These Are Not My Images takes a journey through unequal areas: through southern India, where the images and sounds are recorded, through India as a stereotype Third-World country, and through nothing, the state of emotional detachment in which all the characters find themselves. Pasolini once said: ‘A westerner who goes to India has everything, but gives nothing. India has nothing, but gives everything.’ Is making a film an act of giving or taking? Batsry’s film is a multifaceted work that interweaves elements from different genres. The film is experimental in its structure and visual style. It is a documentary in the sense that it investigates the boundaries of that genre: how do distortion of framing and editing change the image we see? It is an essay about the question: whose images are these? Do they belong to the film- maker, or to the people on the film? The narrative element, finally, consists of voice-overs by three characters: a disillusioned western film-maker, a half-blind guide and a local film-maker. These Are Not My Images evokes different ideas about the concept of place: as area, location, context, situation, but also as a home. Batsry has lived in different cultures; the thread through her work is formed by detachment, identity and the way in which one culture looks at the other. She questions the way in which we see and show reality.