Developed over a three-year period (2005-2008), After Hiroshima Mon Amour was begun with the intention to look at sites of American military incursion and governmental neglect through the lens of the celebrated 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour, directed by Alain Resnais and written by Marguerite Duras. After Hiroshima Mon Amour uses various visual and aural strategies to layer and analyze instances of violence and trauma. Titles, silence, brief sync sound, and music are used to create a new story out of an old one. The allegorical couple of the 1959 film is played by ten interconnecting actors who blur distinctions of ethnicity, race, and gender, undermining the categories that are often used to rationalize violence. And as in the Resnais/Duras film, eroticism and violence are interwoven. Various scenes in black and white are faithfully recreated from Hiroshima mon amour. Contemporary material downloaded from the Internet, a remix of the score and sound design of the original, and particular uses of color become other characters in the video.
