The Future is Behind You

Directed by Abigail Child

A fictional story composed from an anonymous family archive of 1930s Europe with two sisters who play, race, fight, kiss, and grow up together under the shadow of oncoming history. There are at least three levels of research: 1) the home movie in which a family poses for the camera, preternaturally happy; 2) the historical moment which remains as text trace, undermining the image and serving as covert motive; 3) the development of gender identities—the innocent freedom of the elder transformed into socially bruised ‘bride,’ the irrepressibility of the younger moving from tomboy to awkward, diffident adult. At once biography and fiction, history and psychology, The Future is Behind You excavates gestures to get at the heart of narrative; it seeks a bridge between private and public histories. Music by John Zorn, arranged and performed for the movie by Sylvie Courvoisier and Mark Feldman.