A Missing Self

16 min. essayistic documentary

on identity, transculture,
cultural boundaries
and ways to transcend them 

Starring a Japanese artist
calling herself “A Passenger”

(trailer)

It is a companion to “The Phenomenology of Truth“. Both titles feature the same performer (in this one she chose to be anonymous.)   Both marvel about the ways we seek the truth.  While “The Phenomenology…” deals with our perception of the outside world, “A Missing Self” attempts to address the way we see our own selves.

The project brings together two activities that share concern about how we construct our cultural identities. One does it through performance art, another through a philosophical discourse.

A still from the film.

Premieres on Dec. 12 during the fifth edition of the Philosophical Film Festival.   Cracow, Poland.   

a post premiere discussion (in Polish) is here

A still from the film.

“Each culture is insufficient rather than sufficient, and looks for dialog with other cultures”, “so it’s a very important right for a person to live beyond one’s own culture.” (the clip)

Mikhail Epstein, Ph.D.
Emory University

“The freedom to create oneself requires a range of socially transmitted options from which to invent what we have come to call our identities.”

Albert Anderson, Ph.D.
Babson College

“Any society which calls itself free has to give its member possibility to get outside of its regular framework.” 

Werner Krieglstein, Ph.D.
DuPage University

 

“We have to transform ourselves”
 Soho Machida, Ph.D.
Hiroshima University Graduate School
 
written/directed by
Pawel Kuczynski
music by
Andrzej Dudek-Durer