RUSSIAN WINDOWS

Russian Windows is a rumination on the web-based relationship of a Russian teacher stranded in Ghent, and her American student in New York. Olivia Ebertz’ film documents her encounters with her Russian teacher Varya which increasingly gain a very intimate dimension as the filmmaker begins to engage in a sort of online stalking: exploring Varya’s photos on her Instagram account, traversing her home town on Google Street view, researching google reviews of shops in her neighborhood and musing about the details of her private life in voice over. The film thus becomes an essayistic musing on the paradoxes of digital presence/absence and technology’s potential to collapse time and space while the “friction of distance” is still very much intact. It asks what we reveal about ourselves in online environments and what degrees of digital intimacy are possible.

OLIVIA EBERTZ

 

Olivia Ebertz is a fun and self-reflexive ethnographic documentary filmmaker from Minnesota, USA. Her past work has been shown around the world, notably at places such as Dok Leipzig, Brooklyn Film Festival, Flyway Film Festival, and the Walker Art Center. Ebertz’ work heavily explores themes of exiles, foreign language acquisition, and liminality. She is currently undertaking an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin

• Camden International Film Festival
• Kasseler Dokfest
• Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival

DOKer 2019 — LET IT DOK! COMPETITION PROGRAM