Manon de Boer’s films investigate the multilayered relations between time, memory, language, and truth through aural and visual interpretations. She is particularly wellknown for her series of portrait films that document and reveal the inner thoughts and memories of various people.
Attica, created in collaboration with musicians, is a visual translation of two pieces by the American composer Frederic Rzewski, who was inspired by a 1971 revolt at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York when inmates, demanding their human rights, took over the institution; the uprising ended with 43 fatalities, among them prison officers who had been held as hostages. Attica opens with the last part of Rzewski’s “Coming Together,” a piece based on a letter written by Sam Melville, an inmate killed during the riot. In the spring of 1971, Melville wrote a letter to a friend describing his experience of the flow of time. Rzewksi’s “Attica” tells the story of Richard X. Clark, one of the instigators of the revolt. Upon his release, when a journalist asked him how he felt leaving Attica behind, he replied, “Attica is in front of me.” Jan Rzewski, the composer’s son, repeats these words as a refrain throughout the piece. Shot in 16 mm format, De Boer’s film is composed of a 360-degree panning shot that begins showing the musicians one by one as the music plays, leaving them to encompass the entire setting in a circle, and finally ends by returning to the opening frame.
