My Heart of Darkness – By Staffan Julén
16 October 2011
Film screening
Färgfabriken
Film screening and talk during the exhibition I Will Never Talk About the War Again.
Four war-veterans, from different sides, step onto a boat at the mouth of the Kwando river, deep within the African interior. They are on a journey back to the battlefield, the site of the last “great” battle of the Cold War – its inconclusive and a very secret Armageddon, where they as youngsters, once tried to kill each other. But now, twenty years later, they’ve come together as former enemies, a new unit of disparate souls joined together not only by the common haunting of war trauma, but also by their need to understand, to reconcile, to forgive.
By screening this film in relation to the exhibition I Will Never Talk About the War Again containing works by artists from former Yugoslavia, also from a society marked by traumatic war memories, Färgfabriken wants to highlight the individual’s role and situation in the perverse logic of conflict.
About the artist
Staffan Julén (1957) is a Swedish director, producer and scriptwriter within documentary and feature film. He founded Eden film in 1983, and lives in Stockholm. Marius van Niekerk (1961) is a South African director, photographer and writer. He was forcefully recruited to the South African army during the apartheid time and came to Sweden, where he still resides, in the 80’s.
Director Staffan Julén introduces the film at 4 p.m. After the screaning (95 minutes) the audience is invited to discuss with Staffan Julén and co-director Marius van Niekerk, toghether with Göran Högberg, post traumatic stress expert.