Subtotals

A poetic essay meticulously constructed from clips of Iranian 8mm home videos from bygone days. As we watch birthdays and wedding parties, people dancing, laughing, swimming or just relaxing, a narrator, in a contemplative, sometimes heavy voice, enumerates series of dry facts. But what does it matter how many kisses one received, how many times one truly laughed or what time one went to bed or got up? Can adding up such numbers sum up a life?

These listings of figures alternate with brief confessional phrases that evoke an entire hidden world: “Because I am funny, people think I'm happy,” and “I love myself less than I have been loved.” Subtotals was inspired by the eponymous short story by Gregory Burnham and Édouard Levé's novel Autoportrait.