Usambara Violet (2021)

• 84%
• 2021
• Documentary
• Aman Wadhan

Initially conceived as a meditation on isolation and convalescence, the film is a record of my dimly lit hours indoors during the spring lockdown in Budapest. I had sought refuge in still life, material remains and crepuscular tidings to emphasise the strangeness of the everyday, yet it was my correspondence with friends back home that became the beating heart of the composition. In retrospect, as a foreigner who was still figuring out his relationship with a new city, I have inadvertently traced the onset of acculturation by contrasting the here, the elsewhere, and the anywhere.