Philip Scheffner

Havarie

Jill Glessing
Goethe-Institut, Toronto
Presented with Hot Docs Festival, Images Festival, and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
March 3 — May 31, 2018
PhilipScheffner_HAVARIE
Philip Scheffner,Havarie, video still, 2016.
Photo : © pong Berlin
Goethe-Institut, Toronto
Presented with Hot Docs Festival, Images Festival, and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
March 3 — May 31, 2018
PhilipScheffner_Havarie install
Philip Scheffner
Installation view, Goethe Media Space, Goethe Institut, Toronto, 2018.
Photo : Jutta Brendemühl, © Goethe Institut, Toronto
A small dark shape floating on sparkling blue sea. This scene extends throughout the duration of Philip Scheffner’s 90-minute film essay Havarie (2013). The subject, easily recognizable from photojournalists’ accounts, is the ongoing refugee crisis — the flow of African and Middle Eastern migrants seeking safety in an unwelcoming Europe. The film’s visual content is based on a 3 min. 36 sec. video clip shot by Terry Diamond, an Irish tourist on a Mediterranean cruise, which Scheffner discovered on YouTube. This surprising encounter between the massive ship, Adventure of the Seas, and a small rubber dinghy barely containing thirteen passengers, functions as the film’s silent centre. Revealing the potency of the nearly still video image is a soundtrack of voices sharing diverse stories of refugee experience — stories of hope, loss, and trauma.

Originally planning to incorporate the found clip as one element within a larger film, Scheffner conducted research and interviews. Concerned, however, that conventional documentary approaches eliciting sympathy by delving deeply into subjects’ lives only perpetuate the divide between victim and viewer, he radically changed course. Abandoning the visuals from his interview footage, he laid the collaged soundtrack onto the found clip, and dramatically slowed down the video.

You must be logged in to access this content.

Create your free profile or log in now to read the full text!

My Account
This article also appears in the issue 94 - Labour
Discover

Suggested Reading