How is history created? What does or does not enter our memory? By recreating a variety of heterogeneous historical fragments - the making of the atomic bomb, military trials at the end of World War II, the workings of the lie detector, the discovery of the concentration camp Majdanek, an interview with a sniper during the war in former Yugoslavia - this new meditative documentary by film essayists Andreas Hoessli and Isabella Huser resembles nothing less than a new history.
Images, documents, and texts all collide with each other, forming a history quilt. One should not trust these images, nor should one believe the staging, argue the two Swiss directors. EPOCA clearly argues that authentic historiography neither exists nor that it should exist.
Using few images and even fewer words, EPOCA points to different examples of the appropriation of history. One of their examples is the fact that in the former Soviet Union, victims and survivors of the Holocaust were only recognized as belonging to the more general category of "Victims of the anti-fascist Russian warriors," a category which hides if not denies the specificity of their experiences.
A film like EPOCA does not seek answers, but opens up questions, inviting its audience to actively participate in this process.
"Anyone interested in history will find EPOCA challenging, thought-provoking, and a wonderful adjunct to the many more "straightforward' documentaries… It has forced me to reexamine how I perceive what is not becoming history."—The Sentinel Record
"A rigorous, lovingly crafted meditation on the elusiveness - and illusory - nature of truth in the historical record."—Ken Eisner, Variety
2002 Berlin Film Festival
2002 Amsterdam International Documentary Festival
2002 Vancouver International Film Festival