Anneliese Holles

writer, film maker, curator

Born in England, resident in Berlin since 2004, I have been developing my work in film among other disciplines. From my U.K. origins in painting, drawing and poetry, and having studied Fine Art, I developed my research by exploring ideas in short films, which I started to make in 1999.

I was attracted by everyday narratives which I would hear on the street, on the radio, or in cafés. I began to put these together, combining my love of language with a certain surreality visible in the image. For example, Confessions (1999) frames its subject pondering her very private inner world in the public space of a bus shelter, Good Definition (2003), based on a visceral poem, frames the speaking red lips vertically with obvious sexual associations, Femme Fatale (2004) captures its subjects on the sofa in the dark, spotlit as they wrestle with their consciences. The direction away from this formal abstraction began with the longer film The Hunted (2009), which developed my love of Noir film and mystery, interrogation, and is itself very visually reductive.

The two documentaries, Love & Other Manias (2012) and Entmust (2014) were an experimental attempt to get to know their subjects, “warts and all”, and to let them tell their stories but with my intervention as interlocuter, investigator of narratives. In fact, there is always a play between fact and fiction here and sometimes the subjects are inseparable from their work; “ART AS LIFE!” Or else they become the character they aspire to in their work. During this process I learnt how to edit my material which has helped me greatly in understanding not only the craft of directing but also the importance of precision, timing and technique in film.

These themes, everyday narratives with bigger consequences, montage, fact vs fiction, love of story telling, reductive framing and composition, exotic use of language and surreality inform my work. I hope to continue these themes in my current projects, which are themselves inspired, as ever, by chance meetings and apparently simple human stories humbly shared with me. I hope to explore their true potential and power in the visual and verbal language I have been developing these past years to bring them to a more universal level of understanding.