A Moonless Night

When a filmmaker begins shooting a documentary to recount their mother’s career as an optical engineer, the story is complicated by a non-disclosure agreement signed in 1987 with the Chinese state. The talk unpacks Solveig’s attempts to construct a personal narrative through the limitations of a confidentiality agreement with a powerful state. Tracing the non-disclosure and absence of information, the talk weaves together alternative genealogies of optical media through a mother-daughter relationship and archival footage, exploring where tensions are held between memory and its images, belonging and statecraft, lens crafting and transposition.