‘Places Other People Have Lived’ by Laura Yilmaz is a wonderful short film that uses mixed media to explore the relationship between memory and place. This is clearly an autobiographical film as Yilmaz uses old photographs, family interviews and a variety of animation techniques such as stop motion, hand drawn, pixelation and rotoscoping to deconstruct the relationships which play out in the various rooms of the house her family called home for over 25 years.
Although it begins as a personal journey it very quickly broadens out into questions about our own histories and what happens to our stories when we leave those places behind. It’s poignant, warm, thoughtful and makes one reminisce and think about our own past.
Laura Emel Yilmaz is a filmmaker and animator whose films have screened in numerous festivals around the world, including Animafest Zagreb, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, and CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival. This film premiered as Juror’s Stellar Animation (best of festival) in the 2012 Black Maria Film + Video Festival tour.