Man Number 4 & I’m Not Everything I Want to Be

Programme

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  Man Number 4

  There’s something indisputably sinister about a photograph taken in Gaza in December 2023 and then shared on social media. But it’s difficult to say exactly why. Is it the combination of men in handcuffs kneeling on the ground and the soldiers lurking some distance away? Or is it the setting: an area of scraggly bushes and trees with a deserted apartment block in the background? Does the presence of lighting equipment and a photographer suggest the scene is staged? And what about the background role played by Dr Khalid Hamoda, who has since disappeared without a trace?
  
  Filmmaker Miranda Pennell deconstructs the photograph by zooming in on individual details. What are we actually looking at? As each piece of the puzzle is identified, the initially pixelated image becomes clearer. The camera gradually zooms out until we can see the entire picture. We might have given this image just a cursory glance before scrolling on, but now we are faced with an inevitable question: Once you know what the photograph depicts, how can you, the observer, remain neutral?

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  I’m Not Everything I Want to Be

  The New York Times dubbed photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková “the Nan Goldin of Soviet Prague”. She has been working since the 1960s, shooting gritty and visceral images of marginalized groups, and often turning the camera on herself. But it wasn’t until recently that the artistic merit of her photographs was recognized internationally. When she’s invited to show her work at the 2019 Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, she dives into her archive.
  
  This film about Jarcovjáková’s life and work draws exclusively on her own material, and takes the form of a slideshow with additional journal extracts read aloud by the photographer. The rhythmic succession of thousands of photographs draws the viewer into the world as she experienced it in her decades-long search for freedom. Powerful use of audio transports us through her turbulent past, with appropriate background sounds bringing the images to life-machine noise for her pictures of workers in Communist Prague, bass rhythms for her scenes from Berlin nightlife, and camera clicks for the models she photographed for leading fashion magazines in Tokyo.