Berlinale 2024: I’m Not Everything I Want To Be (Panorama Dokumente) | Review
I’m Not Everything I Want To Be offers a profound and engaging documentary experience featuring Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková’s stunning work and explores personal narratives amidst political and social upheavals.
In amongst a week of fantastic cinema, I’m Not Everything I Want To Be was my favourite film at this year’s 74th Berlinale. With masterful simplicity, Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková reads her diaries aloud accompanied by a wonderfully edited montage of her still photographs. Aside from the occasional burst of music, this is everything we experience in Klára Tasovská’s solo directorial feature debut.
Whilst on the surface this doesn’t sound like the most captivating premise (just still photography and one voice over for a full 90 minutes?!), the result is one of the most profound, engaging documentaries I have seen in a long time – and I say this as a die hard documentary fan. The film presents a moving portrait of Jarcovjáková’s life, which traces the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, starting in Prague then taking us through life in Tokyo and Berlin between 1970 and 1989. Subjects include the photographer in her bathtub, her printing factory job, her body post abortion, various lovers, colleagues and partying friends. The faces of those portrayed, including Jarcovjáková herself, are unbelievably beautiful, in all of their brokenness, their lines, their unconventionality.
Loneliness, depression and existentialism imbue Jarcovjakova’s world as she rides waves of deep solitude and hyper stimulation. From being alone in Japan to partying at the heart of the underground queer scene in Prague, the intimacy that we experience as we travel through the subject’s innermost thoughts is an incredible manifestation of the feminist idea that the personal is political and the political is personal. This incredible insight into her life, body, love affairs and traumas touch upon the raw nerve of what it means to be a human, whilst simultaneously situating this most individual, personal story within the context of the political, social and economic upheavals of the time.
The cinematic quality of the photographs brought out due to Jarcovjakova’s style of taking and keeping consecutively shot images (instead of the usual practice of discarding all but one), giving a pacey quality to the film. Alongside this is the incredible editing work of Alexander Kashcheev, who also served as the sound designer, and both music and editing style give an amazing freshness, momentum and contemporaneity to what is otherwise a series of still images.
Despite only being discovered in later life, when her work was displayed at the prestigious Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles in 2019, Jarcovjáková’s dedication to photography appears unwavering. Even in the face of oppressive restrictions under the Soviet regime upon her sexuality, education, travel, body and artistic subjects, Jarcovjáková continued to produce at an astonishing quality and quantity. Called the “Nan Goldin of Soviet Prague” by The New York Times, I’m Not Everything I Want To Be continues the recent emergence of documentaries focussed on female photographers – also see Finding Vivien Mayer and All The Beauty And The Bloodshed – of a similar ilk; emotive, cinematographically stunning, politically charged retrospectives. I, for one, am hoping for many more to come!
