Born out of the tension that prevails between the self and society, proximity and distance, utopia and reality, homeland is the point where and when one is rooted with the center of the earth without losing their identity. Homeland comes the closest to a materialized concept of being, announcing a self that is certain of their belonging to both themselves and the universe.
But history, as we know, is made of infinite examples of political instrumentalization of the meaning of homeland, which have been embodied in countless hecatombs. Reduced to a strict definition, the concept is then used as a tool of segregation, exclusion and discrimination. The patriotic homeland becomes the worst enemy of the ontological meaning of the word.
That irresolvable conflict between ontological purity and exploitative potential reflects the paradoxical nature of homeland as a term with multiple meanings. But it is this same complexity that makes it the perfect foil for cinema, itself a technological and ontological paradox. So it is only sensible to posit and examine the connections between cinema and the idea of homeland, to wonder – what really happens when the ideological and poetical apparatuses of these two forces conflate? How does cinema reveal the problematic nature of homeland? And what can homeland’s symbolic charge tell us about the complexity of moving image?
Believing that the dialectics between a theme and a medium holds profoundly revolutionary potential for dissecting both, the thematic program “Homeland” highlights those rare and unique films that achieve this powerful capacity.