| the film won at the FIDMarseillle documentary film festival 2010 the "prix premier mention" VIEWERS FROM A GERMAN IP ADRESS: if you cant see the film due to GEMA censorship, please check this site: anchorfree.com or go to: www.dailymotion.com In The Dubai in Me, a feature length documentary by Berlin-based composer, artist, writer and filmmaker Christian von Borries, Dubai constantly appears as the ultimate neo-capitalist nightmare: a virtual reality reminiscent of Second Life, made real by migrant labor, still empty, much like the office tower down the street. (David Riff) Dubai has rapidly carved itself out a reputation as being a theoretical object. This is how Christian von Borries approaches it and what explains the title of his film. What is laid bare here is less the picturesque market town which has grown up over night, crammed with buildings on the scale of the pharaohs, but more the realisation of a liberal utopia. Dubai is a screen where sad dreams are played out, those inscribed by the imagination of capital, the dreams that haunt us: the Dubai-in-me. This is why von Borries combines shots of Dubai with local real estate advertising clips. This is why he adds sequences lifted from Second Life to these. Here and there this seemingly exponential growth, this same desire to appropriate real estate, the same flights of fancy. Here and there, the image has the same role, eventually to become one big eternal, ideal residence. If von Borries sets out to analyse this ... |
