Deborah Stratman – a retrospective A deeper dive into the work of Deborah Stratman and how it influenced our programme. An exploration of the themes present in her body of work as well as the messages she conveys in her filmmaking. Deborah Stratman is an artist/filmmaker born in Washington D.C. in 1967 and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She has a filmography spanning four decades, wherein she has explored themes of surveillance, isolation, and existentialism, using experimental filmmaking techniques and non-linear narratives to convey a range of different ideas and emotions for audience members. She has experimented with a range of genres, primarily documentary and experimental filmmaking, but she has also dabbled in music videos, re-enactment, and even science fiction. Deborah Stratman is currently teaching as an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois. Her work was a massive influence for our event, most notably inspiring the title of our screening as well as having one of her films featured in our lineup. In Order Not To Be Here (Deborah Stratman, 2002) is widely recognised as her magnum opus, an isolating, documentary-style account of the quiet horror in a secluded suburban town, with still shots of gas stations, supermarket car parks, lonely streets, and the occasional perspective of a CCTV camera watching people walk by.

Stratman undoubtedly channelled her own experiences growing up and living in midwestern Illinois when creating this film, as it taps into a unique atmosphere only found in the desolate corners of an already empty town. The film’s greatest achievement in my opinion is its sound design, capturing the low industrial hums and buzzes of supermarket aisles mixed with indistinct radio chatter peppered into an almost suffocating quiet, confronting viewers with its silence. I originally came across this film randomly on YouTube one night whilst browsing for short experimental films to feature in our project, and immediately felt a connection towards Stratman’s films and the concepts she explores in them. In Order Not To Be Here won best experimental film during the 2003 Humboldt international film festival, and solidified Stratman’s status as one of the great American experimental filmmakers. We chose not to feature this film in our lineup as we wanted to shine a light on one of her lesser-known works while still relating to our event’s focus on surveillance culture, instead using In Order Not To Be Here as a launchpad for inspiration when it came to our decision making process, especially when brainstorming our event’s atmosphere and added value concepts. We chose Hacked Circuit (2014, Deborah Stratman) to feature in our programme as it focuses more directly on surveillance culture, and has a runtime which better fits with our other titles featured in the lineup. In Not To Be Here is currently still uploaded on YouTube, and I highly recommend anybody interested to watch the film prior to our screening to get a better sense of Stratman’s work and how it influenced our event.