To Be Here (2013) dir. Ute Aurand

Ute Aurand has established herself since the 1980s as a key filmmaker in the personal or diary tradition of Margaret Tait, Jonas Mekas and Marie Menken, creating intimate and responsive films that capture fleeting moments, glimpses and snippets of life around her. As Ute Aurand has stated ‘filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation. Sometimes I collect footage for years before deciding to edit a portrait, [like] Susan or Hanging Upside Down in the Branches, then again a portrait like Lisbeth was filmed only on two occasions and edited shortly afterwards.’ Together with these is Zu Hause a self-portrait and her ambitious work To Be Here - a free-wheeling exploration of North America, drawing on footage and experiences fromNew England with the all female Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts to New York and the Hopi reservation in Arizona.