A Refugee's Story, Through Animation

 Lisa Abend. "A Refugee's Story, Through Animation", New York Times, November 28, 2021, p.AR10.

Rather than relying, as in typical documentary style, on talking heads' descriptions, Rasmussen could put Amin visibly badk in his own '80's Kabul.

Achieving that kind of narrative authenticity required a precise attention to detail, Nicholls said.  Each element in every frame had to be accurate to the time and location: the brand of pot on the stove, the quality of a sunset, even the height of the street curb.  Some of the research was conducted by Rasmussen on scouting trips, but Nichools and her team also spent a lot of time combing archives and libraries.  "Finding pre-Taliban footage of Kabul was really difficult," the said.  "I read a lot of books by Russian spies."

COMMENT

Since libraries tend to collect formally published English language material, the missing information that is not in libraries has charactaristic patterns.   In this instance, a filmmaker is trying to represent Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1980's and found almost no relevant information. Pretty much nobody bothered to document pre-Taliban Kabul, so that it is a place that exists only in inaccurate memories.