Intimate Distance

The great promise of internet-based forms of communication is that they help maintain relationships over great geographical distance. Their proliferation and success has, in only a couple of years, fostered new forms of living together, new modes of closeness and intimacy. The collaborative documentary project “Intimate Distance” is a unique experiment for which three transnational families (dispersed between Germany and Russia, Turkey, and Colombia) have recorded their webcam conversations over the course of several months. The resulting film offers a very intimate insight into the fascinating communication rituals, with which people who are separated by migration organize a transnational family life via Skype. “Intimate Distance” is a documentary that evolved without the presence of a director. It is composed solely from the images that its protagonists produce of themselves on a daily basis with the help of digital technology. Thus, the film is a meditation on the potentials and limitations of digitally mediated proximity.