Old video tapes of programmes my dad recorded from the TV, holiday/home videos, and a box of tailoring fabric offcuts and ephemera are the starting points for a video portrait of a father born in a country that no longer exists.

Borders disassembled and reassembled —fragments of video torn from their context, reflect a journey of displacement and survival through war.

This experimental documentary explores an important, but little known and unworked piece of history — the fate of foreign workers in Germany during the Second World War — via my father's journey as a boy from the former Yugoslavia, to wartime Germany as a conscripted worker, then a post war UK — experiencing one war at its axis, and the next at a safe distance.

30 minutes

Astoria Film Festival, New York, USA. 17-18 May 2019 (13 minute version)

Autism Arts Festival, University of Kent, Canterbury. Exhibiting with WEBworks, 26-28 April 2019

Neither Use Nor Ornament, OVADA, Osney Lane, Oxford. 30 March - 28 April 2019

NUNO project was initiated and led by artist Sonia Boué, bringing together two artist networks in a joint exhibition program in Spring 2019. Funded by Arts Council England.

A recorded conversation with my dad about his experiences inspired the making of this film.

The audio interview was meant for transcription as a record, not for presentation. The decision to include his voice as testimony — echoing the often precarious existence of many migrant workers today, also brought other important elements to light. Embedded in the audio, asserting itself in obvious recording imperfections, are traces of another conversation, of being ‘at home’ — a private, safe and familiar space that enables the story — a search for safety, belonging and home — to be told.

This has been shown as a work in progress, still evolving. 13 minute version (shown at the Astoria Film Festival, New York, 2019) below, password needed