Synopsis
An uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.
A word from Tënk
In In Order Not To Be Here, Deborah Stratman explores what is hidden beneath our everyday world. Probing how our environment is shaped by convenience, surveillance, privacy and concerns for safety, she unveils anxieties and our apparatuses of control. Stratman uses the alchemy of her cinema-machine to lay bare systems we thought we knew and generates playful and poetic ways of seeing that are also deeply disturbing. In Order Not To Be Here makes wonderful use of images in seeking to understand how images play out in our own lives. Like many of Stratman’s works, this film takes reality by surprise, causing it to reveal something new and unexpected of itself.
Benjamin R. Taylor
Director and programmer, VISIONS
Founding member of La lumière collective
