CLOSED DISTRICT

The material for ’Closed District’ was recorded in 1996 in the South-Sudanese village of Mankien where Vandeweerd filmed the war, which has lasted for thirty years in this area. Because of the despair and disillusion there, it took him almost ten years to edit the images into a documentary, which is not merely about the war in Sudan, but about wars in general. Many of the people speaking in the film, civilians as well as military serving for the government, have died since in the war, which is increasingly less about ideologies and more about money and oil. ’Closed District’ is a pessimistic (or realist) film. Its b/w images accentuate the fact that these images are by the time of its release already eight years old, though they still haven’t entered into history.