Dearest Fiona

In the collection of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, Fiona Tan researched silent, documentary archive material dating from before the 1920s. The material she found there depicts everyday life and, above all, the hard work only slowly being made easier by machines. Dutch women in traditional costume, winter scenes, harvest labour, fishing, land reclamation, trade and harbour work. Tan, who is of Indonesian descent, came to Amsterdam from Australia to study in 1988. During this period, Tan’s father sent her letters in which he vividly reflects on private affairs, the family dog, his grandson, global politics and the competition between economic systems. The combination of these letters read out in voice-over with the archive material from a completely different time is perplexing at first. The images do not serve to illustrate or validate what is being spoken. What emerges instead is a kind of audiovisual stream of consciousness – heightened by the artful soundtrack – that is open to associations, coincidences and the discovery of subtle connections: between image and sound, then and now, the Netherlands and Indonesia, trade and colonialism, father and daughter. (Berlinale)