Private Territory is a program of films on 16mm and video that will originate in Boston and travel to several Northern European cities between July 18th and August 19th. Inspired by the curator Mariya Nikiforova's voyage from her current home in Boston to her native home in Saint Petersburg, the program was collected around the ideas of home, interiority and self-reflection.
Like Marcel Proust’s light-tight, cork-lined self-imposed prison from which he composed brilliant reflections of contemporary society, a sealed-off space can be a haven of creativity, where the artist’s relation to the outside world becomes more focused. In the case of filmmaking, the magical transformation from inquiry to clarity occurs in such a space – the light-tight film chamber, the camera obscura, where the artist’s real or imaginary voyages are inscribed with light. For the audience member, the intimacy of the cinema allows for his or her imagination to be activated, unhindered by distractions or social inhibitions. To introduce these three private spaces of the imagination, bypassing superficial cultural differences in the process, is the aim of this travelling film program.