Situating love and loss: making a film, re-making a world

Suleman, Babar (2024) Situating love and loss: making a film, re-making a world. Women's History Review, 33 (6). pp. 927-936. ISSN 0961-2025

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Abstract

The title of the author’s film ‘HOW PERFECT IS THIS HOW BLESSED ARE WE’ (HD video, 22 min and 11 s) is taken from the inscription on a bench on the top of a hill, at the highest point in the landscape of Compton Verney, designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in his ideal vision of the British country house. By appropriating this statement of contentment as a critical tool to inquire how perfect it really is and who is the ‘we’ that is so blessed, Suleman inserted their body into the landscape as a reminder of historical absences and erasure, and the legacy of colonialism and queer-phobia. The film is narrated, however, in the register of an address to an absent lover. A personal history and a lover’s yearning doubles as a critique of violent and exclusive histories.