What is the value of personal testimony in the face of History with a capital “H”? The question runs through this program of works that grow out of situations of closure due to war or other hazards, such as those of the remote construction site depicted in Vlatko Gilic's Love. In Measures of Distance, Mona Hatoum uses the body of her mother to evoke both the distance imposed by exile, and the question of the possession of a woman's body. Just after the first Gulf War, filmmaker Samir visits his family in Iraq in (It Was) Just a Job, and tries to reconstruct the war from different points of view, all present on the same screen. Canadian artist Lisa Steele gently caresses and catalogs every scar on her body, turning the body into a form of memory and also a register of violence, in Birthday Suit. A classic of Iranian cinema, Forough Farrokhzad's The House Is Dark presents a haunting and sympathetic examination of life in a Tabriz leper colony. Through powerful images and a striking voiceover, a hidden aspect of humanity is revealed.

Love (Ljubav) (Vlatko Gilic, Yugoslavia, 1972, 23 mins, Color, Beta SP, From Oberhausen Film Festival). Measures of Distance (Mona Hatoum, U.K., 1988, 16 mins, Color, Beta SP, BAM Collection). (It Was) Just a Job (Samir, Switzerland/Iraq, 1992, 5 mins, Color, 35mm, From Dschoint Ventschr). Birthday Suit (With Scars and Defects) (Lisa Steele, Canada, 1974, 13 mins, B&W, Beta SP, From VTape). The House Is Dark (Khaneh siah ast) (Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1963, 21 mins, In Farsi with English synopsis provided, B&W, Video, From Oberhausen Film Festival).