Reel/Unreel Resonse

    This film “Reel/Unreel” by Francis Alys was interesting because while the main focus is on the children playing this game it’s also showing the conditions that they are in and what life looks like on an average day for a child living in Kabul Afghanistan. The film begins with wide shots looking over the city of Kabul to show the city as a whole before we transition to the children playing their game and we get a closer look into the inner workings of the city. As we follow the boys unrolling these reels of film across the roads and many paths of Kabul; we see what life looks like where they live. The camera shots were taken at angles that follow both where the children are going and the area that they are surrounded by, I think this is done as a way to simultaneously guide the viewer watching and show two different perspectives. The first perspective is the child playing with their toy and the other of the society around them. A good amount of the color in the film is shown naturally in the area and in a few instances by the director’s hand; pops of colors show through the trash and litter all around. More moments of color show up from the metal reels, certain people’s clothing, vehicles, and the deliberately placed balloons; I personally liked the more natural pops of color more and felt that the balloons showing up were off-putting. And while that might have been the director’s intention, I didn’t understand why they decided to do that, and what it might mean symbolically to the film as a whole. I felt from the way that the film was edited together that two children were playing this game and were competing over who could go the farthest with their reels of the film; the film while watching definitely makes you question what’s gonna be on the screen next. I felt that that film was touching upon the idea that although these children are growing up with very little and despite what might be going on around them (by comparison to what I’ve known growing up) they still find ways to be kids and keep moving forward which was central to the film. I also felt it was the director’s commentary on his concerns with Afghanistan’s economics and society; by showing children who are perceived as innocent playing around these places that are littered, dirty, and poor, it makes you think about what life is like there. One of my favorite parts of the film is when they would focus on the reels piece of film and keep filming it until the film strip was pulled out of frame, it gave me a feeling of time passing by.