Vita Wilmering
I make films and in that context I work with performance, installation, music and other media, always starting from a documentary basis.
I consider the performative space that a camera evokes an instrument to start friendships and communicate on an intimate level with the people I work with. In many of my projects I play with fictional elements and let people switch between role-playing and reality. The making process is in that sense always a visible part of the work. This gives people the opportunity to reflect in a fresh, sometimes absurd or painful way on major events in their lives. Film itself becomes a way of dealing with absence, but not in a sentimental way, because reconstructing or even re-enacting situations and individual memories always creates a certain discomfort. Each scene is an attempt, rather than a finished act.
This exploring way of working, allows me and the other person to think about how to deal with history or trauma, and also about its translation into images and the mechanisms of filmmaking.
The past years I lived in Gent (BE) and Amsterdam. I did a residency at De Ateliers, where I made (among others) Spiegl, a film that weaves documentary and opera and tells the story of Yitschak Spiegl, who was living as a woman when in 1988 he fled Communist Czechoslovakia.