Tracing Lives

Event Information

Tracing Lives blends diary films & YouTube vlogs to explore and celebrate daily life.

Rather than focusing on extraordinary events, Tracing Lives aims to embrace the mundanity of everyday existence through a series of diary films. Diaries give insight into experiences otherwise unwritten in formal history. By spotlighting them, we learn more about ourselves and each other. Fusing avant-garde filmmakers like Jonas Mekas & Chantal Akerman with contemporary YouTubers such as DaryanaFromUkraine or Yasha Lelonek, Tracing Lives reminds us that there is beauty and power in the everyday. All we need to do is look for it.

Tracing Lives aims to be open to all, the screenings will be a relaxed space with a variety of seating. Please feel free to sit how, and where, you’d like and move around as much as you want - there’s no judgement here for needing to pee half-way through a screening!

Further access information:

Content warnings (CW) are displayed beside each film’s description & will be reiterated on the night. If you have any content concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch (info below)

All screenings will include Closed Captioning. The venue is wheelchair accessible but does have a ramp to enter, with 12 rubber ridges spaced approximately 50cm apart and one 90 degree corner. The room where the screenings will take place does have uneven flooring, however some material will be laid down to make it more even. Accessible parking is available on request. Unfortunately, none of the screenings will have audio description. Please find further venue information, with descriptions and pictures, here. If you’d like to discuss any access concerns further, please contact either The Horse Hospital directly or curator Immie Burt at immieburti@hotmail.co.uk.

13th November 2023:

Doors: 7pm
Start time: 7:30pm

The State of Just Being - Diaries of Displaced Peoples + Intro by filmmaker DaryanaFromUkraine (103mins)

How do you root yourself when your life is being upended? The State of Just Being explores how displaced people can use diaries to assert their existence, encasing memories in a fixed form.

Vlog compilation DaryanaFromUkraine, Germany & Ukraine 2022-23. 17 mins.

When war officially broke out in 2022, DaryanaFromUkraine vlogged her experience of having to leave Ukraine and settle somewhere new. Flowing between her original songs and vlogs, this compilation of videos reflects the grief of having to leave your home whilst also finding beauty & happiness in the smallest of moments.

Daryana’s YouTube Channel: DaryanaFromUkraine
CW - Depictions of being displaced due to war., Discussions of war.

A Letter From Greenpoint - Jonas Mekas., (USA 2005. 80mins.)

“This video is about what it feels like to leave a place in which one has spent more time than any other point”
Displaced from Lithuania during the Second World War, Jonas Mekas started documenting his life shortly after moving to America. Indiscriminate in what he filmed, Mekas pioneered the diary film form. A Letter From Greenpoint shows Mekas leaving his home in Brooklyn, where he had lived for 30+ years. Profoundly introspective, it reflects the constant transience felt by someone torn from their home.

CW- Discussions of being displaced due to war & depression.


14th November 2023:

Finding/Leaving Home + Intro by curator Immie Burt 137mins

Diaries act as time capsules, asserting our presence in a certain place at a certain time - even if there is no physical trace left. In this screening, both filmmakers use film as a diary to claim a location as home - either as they first meet it, or as they say goodbye.

Please note there will be a 10 minute break in between films.

Place of Work - Margaret Tait, (Scotland 1976. 32mins)

A goodbye to the home Margaret Tait had known since she was 7 years old. From how the sunlight falls into her office, to the postman dropping off mail - Place of Work documents not just a house, but the feeling of being at home.

News From Home -Chantal Akerman, USA 1976. 85mins.
News From Home visually documents Chantal Akerman’s first year living in New York. Long shots of the city are overlayed with letters from Akerman’s mother, detailing life back in Brussels. The distance between visuals and voice over reflect the loneliness, guilt and confusion caused by moving away from home.

CW - Discussions of depression.

This screening is in collaboration with The Art of Returning. Akerman’s final feature No Home Movie will be screening at RichMix on 20th November - more details at @theartofreturning on Instagram.

15th November 2023:

Queer Diaries + Event tbc! (100mins (subject to change)

As LGBTQ+ people are rarely written about in formal history, diaries are an important way of learning about Queer existence. Showing Queer bodies, Queer love and BUCKETS of Queer joy, the final night of Tracing Lives will act as a celebration of LGBTQ+ lives.

Reciprocal IVF Success Story and Two Embryo Transfers (FET), Jaewynn & Tragik., (USA 2021. 13mins)

A queer couple’s journey to pregnancy through IVF. Jaewynn & Tragik documented this process to show “how multifaceted, emotional, and beautiful family building can be, especially within the queer community.”
Find their YouTube: @JaewynnTragik

CW- Depictions of pregnancy & failed pregnancy., Needles., Blood.

Transition Diaries Vol. 1 - Yasha Lelonek., USA 2021. 13 mins.

Filmmaker Yasha Lelonek created the Transition Diaries Vol.1 to preserve, visually, how it felt to question her gender identity. Describing the experience as ephemeral, she released it onto YouTube “in hope that other trans people will watch and be inspired”
Yasha’s YouTube: YashaLelonek

CW - Needles., Surgery.

Queer Diaries, Santiago Giralt, (Argentina 2021. 65mins)

A UK premiere! Starting as a re-edit of an unfinished film, Santiago Giralt blends his home videos, films and poetry to contemplate his art and life. The tone of the film reflects the process of “discovering” one’s queerness - encapsulating confusion, joy, sex, love, and finally - unfaltering pride.

CW - Homophobia, Nudity.

Get in Touch!

Instagram @tracinglives_
Email immieburti@hotmail.co.uk