By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Could new way of coexisting in community as a way to replace traditional familiar units and affection bonds be possible? Rosalind Nashashibi’s “Part One…” (2018), taking a a starting point Ursula Le Guin’s “The Shobies’ Story” opens a video diary of a group of undetermined people, seemingly friends and family sharing different spaces behind a conversation about time travel, a subject of the novel itself. With a non linear sequence of memories that seem to interlink the relationships between the characters in the film, Nashashibi seems to want to articulate a discourse around the phenomenon of construction of a non-traditional structure of coexistence.

More than being a reworking of the old anarchist ideas of commune models, Nashashibi deconstructs the linear narrative of her work to propose an idea underlying in Le Guin’s book: that time/space disruption severs the communicating vessels of human relationships in such way that they have the need to be reconstructed again. This happens over and over again during the film, and this reinforces the notion of a constant reconstruction of human links. Taking the video diary as a working weapon, the filmmaker exposes the images of a possibility that is then again split apart and rebuilt in order to re establish an underlying bond.

In Part One: Where there is a joyous mood, there a comrade will appear to share a glass of wine, Nashashibi takes her time to make these images speak of nostalgia, reverie and melancholic rapport. And in its last shot, this new established “family” seems to want to discover the underlying image of a 3D picture. It’s a hidden mystery of discovery that relates intensely to the filmmakers’ wish to uncover new possibilities behind the family unit.

Directed by: Rosalind Nashashibi
Cast: Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didziapetris, Pauline Manacorda, Pietro Manacorda, Elena Narbutaite
United Kingdom / Poland / Austria / Netherlands
2018