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> Synopsis

Line of Sight explores themes of displacement, memory, and the interplay of language and technology, drawing inspiration from Ali Eslami's poetry collection with the same title. The film uses poetic mediums such as spoken word, code poetry, and ASCII art to navigate the intricate ways language articulates our inner realm.

It unfolds a complex tapestry of memories encrypted into codes, poems, and surreal narratives, revealing a dark blend of chaos, conflict, and entangled relationships to the viewer.

The distinction between the viewer, reader, and protagonist becomes obscure, fostering a cyclic movement between the inner and outer voice that morphs through each segment.

The film unfolds through a series of meticulously assembled vignettes and fragments, weaving a robust, coherent thread amid the protagonist's fragmented and dislocated reality. In a world where forging a coherent self seems increasingly elusive, Line of Sight ventures to explore this struggle through its experimental narrative.

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> Trailer

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> Foreword

Guarding a toilet at 3am, the silence and slight breeze touching my face, washing away the crawling fear of getting caught by the officer who was supposed to check on me to see if I’m standing upright at random times—such as 3:43am.

I have never daydreamed so intensely as the time I was serving mandatory military service in Iran. I couldn’t stop drifting in thoughts, side-tracked while marching with other 300-ish folks in lines.

Sometimes I wonder, have I gone mad thinking back on those times with good memories? Am I apologetic about the whole army thing? I do wonder how come those memories of supposedly the darkest times of life have become so lucid, bright, and dreamy.

I suppose all these memories cipher into lines of code that give a glimpse into the dark amalgamation of chaos, conflict, and messed-up ties. While both hands stuck to the gun, I kept simulating a computer to write down all those codes. Compile them on myself, on the officer who’s about to check on me in a minute, on the...

…still standing, perhaps upright, chin up, guarding a toilet at 3:55am.

A breeze plays with my cheeks and brushes the leaves.

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> Publication

"..To climb the edge of the wind, to draw and erase, to become half-clever, to make islands from cardboard, to see and unsee, to make millions and own islands. To keep it together to scatter into pieces, to be somewhere at some time. To feel the graph of death, to move fast, so fast that you are held still." excerpt from the foreword

"Line of Sight" is a collection of experimental poetry by Ali Eslami, exploring the interplay of emotions and memories. The work is written as codes representing the writer's thoughts during his mandatory military service in Iran. These code-poems are designed as pieces of code that can be read, interpreted, and compiled by the reader, inviting them to decode and piece together a disrupted and fragmented self.

Departing from Eslami's background in virtual reality and film, the collection emerged from a deep-seated need to express the inexpressible. Through a mixture of poems, codes, ASCII pictograms, and absurdist stories, the author captures the struggle of existing between two worlds —the diasporic reality of life between present-day Amsterdam and the evocative echoes of Iran's past and present, narrated through the dual voices of introspection and projection.

Published 
On sale at athenaeum boekhandel & san-serrife

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> Film Stills

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> Installation Views

Rijksackademie Open Studios 2023, Amsterdam

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> Credits

    - Editing, Direction, Sound: Ali Eslami
    - Sound Engineering: Kenny Kneefel
    - Production Assistant: Clemens Stumpf , Tomasz Skibicki , Ilse de jong
    - Book Binding: Thekla Ahrens
    - Video Documentation: Clemens Stumpf
    - Photography - Sander van Wettum


    Special Thanks to:
    Molly Palmer
    Rijksackademie workshop specialists, staff, and advisors