Exhale (2007)

Documentary filmed in Rwanda with testimony from survivor-witnesses that evoke the unspoken 'aura' of trauma that resonates within memorial sites. EXHALE records stillness and tranquility at places that paradoxically endured sustained violence and atrocity. A series of vignettes capture both human interaction and nonhuman indifference at these urban and rural trauma sites - Nyamata Catholic Church, Bugesera and the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda's capital city. Yet these spaces somehow remain outside time with a distinct ambiance and aura. Pilgrims and curious tourists come and go. Seemingly oblivious to the catastrophic milieu, life goes on. At tropical dusk, amid places of unimaginable slaughter and brutality, the ocher brickwork diffuses and absorbs the hemorrhaging signs of assault. In the brief twilight of evensong, African birds warble and cackle, schoolchildren play their street games, disembodied voices trail off, far away noises and incongruous sounds of motorbikes, cars and trucks erupt, disrupting the lilting cadence of birdsong, squeals of joy and peels of laughter, while roosters crow, and daily life ebbs and flows, with all its ambivalence and antipathy.