It may be that letter writing has become a forgotten art. And yet, as art that demands from the writer both intimacy and intellectual depth, it resembles the art of documentary filmmaking. Like letters, documentary films move between closeness and abstraction.
Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari draws on this similarity: Together with her partner, London based sculptor Douglas White, she has created a fascinating essay film in form of a correspondence. The letters document their artistic process and provide a strong narrative that accompanies their cinematic collage of personal pictures, images of White’s work, and archival material from Iran. Disturbing sequences about Akbari’s struggle with cancer and a high-risk pregnancy enter into a dialog with White’s creatural sculptures to create a fascinating contemplation about the links between body, object and memory, destruction and reconstruction, violence and hope. Akbari’s and White’s deeply poetic correspondence shows that life needs art as much as art needs life.

(abe, DokuArts)