How can one describe a film which is a deeply moving autobiographic essay and at the same time a very wise reflection of image making. It is the relationship between the vulnerable body and soul who has survived a serious cancer disease in her early childhood and the precise devices of modern filmmaking. The footage of the rollicking baby the filmmaker once was are integrated in this short but very intense piece of film. This footage from the filmmaker´s early childhood is shot by her father on video and the kind how it is inserted in this film, it appears like an artificial extension of the limited human biological memory. The father´s video recordings conserves a memory which would be otherwise lost. In her voice-over commentary, the filmmaker reflects about the traces the long struggle against her cancer disease has left on her body and soul. Her voice over-reflects as well about this huge amount of work which was needed to help her survive and recover. If I remember correctly there is not much seen of the adult filmmaker, I remember only a detail shot of her body during a massage.
The baby we see in the old video footage differs from all the childhood photos and videos we know from our family and friends only through a tube in her nose. The baby is just old enough to face playfully during her first steps the challenges gravitation and balance. The film does not work only on two time levels, (the early childhood and the present), there is also a special relationship between Peters voice over-reflections which is explicit personal and for now - the footage of her childhood which is observant and which emphasizes the almost neutral objectivity of the image making device. The emotion this footage evokes in Marthe Peters family we can only guess. But through the montage, this Proustian jumps between the two time levels evokes in me the impression of a very moving cinematic poem. It is not only a film about devices, the medical ones who guaranteed the protagonist´s surviving and recovering and the image making devices who enabled her to find images for this struggle against this treacherous disease, the film becomes a metaphor for life or its power to struggle for surviving itself.
Kaalkapje, by Marthe Peters is not only an excellent example for Caméra Stylo but as well one of these wonders which reminds us not only why Cinema was invented but at the same time why the short film, the oldest format of filmmaking since the beginning of cinema is still as vital like 129 years ago. Anywhere between the wonderful essayistic films by Trinh T. Minh-ha and the heartbreaking explicit autobiographic films by Yang Yong-hi, Kaallapje is a short but unforgettable and very intense film experience.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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