Het was niet mijn oorlog - It was not my warstudio Asja Keeman

Het was niet mijn oorlog is a tribute to a father who was forced to stay as a child in the Japanese camp Halmaheira on Java in the former Dutch-East Indies during the Second World war. It talks about the effect that this captivity has on him but also on the other generations of the family. The book focuses on how can you tell a story about the intergenerational effects of war in the here and now if it is no longer physically here?  We decided that the visual journey must be told through the voices of the three generations of the Kist family. The father, his daughter, and his then six-year-old grandchild. All three, in their own ways, narrate the effects of the past trauma; the fathers’ vulnerability and strength are portrayed in and like nature, trees specifically. His daughters’ voice is turned into poems, recognizing and questioning her fathers’ past. The six-year-old grandchild symbolizes a new generation, who grows up without war but still feels the effect of it.