In 1997, I wrote a story about a girl who travelled across Europe, Russia and Asia, filming the things she saw. That year, I contacted people in fifteen countries and asked them to film their city for me as if they were her. Out of the tapes I received, I made The Lost Days.
I wanted to make a film about a girl who travelled around the world, filming the things she saw. In my mind, this girl didnt really belong anywhere and her travels, instead of bringing her closer to who she was would push her further away. She reminded me of a sentence I had once read, “I miss the world…I feel homesick for each and every country.”
At the time I began to think about this girl, I was living illegally in the States and could not travel. Everyday I was thinking of her and how much I wanted to tell her story. Gradually, I came up with the idea of having other people shoot my film for me.
I started to search for people who I believed could fit into my characters mind. I wanted them to really live her journey, filming their cities through her eyes and wandering the streets as if they were her. Through the internet, friends and organisations , I came up with a list of people in fifteen countries, who I thought sounded interesting.
I began to write to them about my character. I asked them to borrow a Hi8 camera and to film the things I thought she would be drawn to. For each country, I consulted maps, books, stories and imagined the way she would pass through there. Sometimes I would send lists and specific instructions but most of all I would just talk about a feeling.
Every few weeks, a tape would arrive from someone I had contacted. The year passed like that and every time I got a new tape my conception of the girl would be changed.
At the end of the year, I started to make the story. I spent weeks filming images off screens, isolating, slowing down, colouring . Slowly the journey started to emerge and one day the story was completely there. There was a beginning in Jaffa and an end in Taipei, lots of driving and a man waiting somewhere in New York. In each of the tapes people sent there were endless possibilities. The video is just one version of what existed there.
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