Text by Jo Ractliffe
‘The sign was saying:
After or before the wall there is us, the people.
He has seen it cause he went through, cause he jumped it. Because of that he had an idea. That something which was above or behind him was after him. That's why.
Things are relative.’
Made over a period of six days in October 2001, One Year Later traces a man's journey through Johannesburg. In a sequence of images taken from the inner city and surrounding mine dumps, along the freeways to the suburbs and malls of the north, the narrative is developed over the internal dialogue of the central character as he makes his way through the city, and the interjections by the constructor of the film.
"We wanted to make a story about the inner city. But usually, to be the tellers of the story means that you are outside of it in some way; either the story is already made, and the telling comes after, or, as the one who determines and controls the narrative, you are separate from it. In this video, we are both the tellers and the characters; a position which is not unlike the way we inhabit and experience this city. And then there is this city... But it is not a place that you can apprehend in any concrete way; it is a place that slips, that moves away from your understanding every moment that you think you have found it."
The footage was photographed on colour slide film with a Holga, a plastic toy stills camera. These transparencies were then stuck together to make one continuous filmstrip that was then illuminated through a light box, recorded onto video and edited.
