sr

Recorded in the first dictionary of the Egyptian language is the hieroglyph of the giraffe: sr. In Lea Hartlaub’s film sr the animal emerges as a recurring motif, appearing sometimes directly, sometimes on the margins, across 16 fragmentary episodes that depict a panorama of human activity.

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The film’s 91 narrative tableaus lead to 30 sites, such as the banks of the Nile, a ceramic factory near Bejing, an island in the Western Pacific, a storage space of Anthropology, a reading room in New York, the Sahara desert and a runway in central Niger. Long shots permit viewers the time necessary to observe carefully. Intertwining themes gradually evolve between past and present times. These include the trajectories of exoticism, cultural artifacts, colonial relics, relations of power and the relativity of knowledge. But rather than take up a didactic position, sr is a film of implied meanings, of images and stories that invite independent contemplation.