The experimental video "1001 Nights" created by Jananne Al-Ali, documents the slightly surreal accounts of 5 women who have been affected by war or conflict. Within the 6 minute duration of the video, you (as the audience) are briefly introduced to 5 women. All the creator allows you to see are the heads of these women.
The women are organised in a straight line, running along the screen. The women’s faces are in colour, opposed to the black, lifeless backdrop in which dominates the shot continuously. I feel the creator has set this effect up, so the audience can see that the concept of the 6 minute video is dark and that the characters feelings and stories reflect the lack of colour surrounding them. The use of sound in "1001 nights" is minimal.
The only sound heard by the audience is the diegetic diction coming from the 5 female characters while delivering there separate monologues. These extended moments of speech, are every woman’s account of war and conflict. However, though these stories have a serious tone to them, if you were to take small quotations out of a number of moments in the video and take them completely out of context, they would seem confusing and sometimes comical from an outsider’s point of view. An example of this is when the 4th woman says "...we see an enormous rhinoceros come round the house..."
If this was possibly taking out of context, the woman could be referring to a trip to the zoo that she once took. Or that a rhinoceros is a military vehicle. In my opinion Jananne Al-Ali has let the audience make their own decisions about what the women are talking about.
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