Armando

What happens in your childhood defines your life, according to artist Armando. His childhood was defined by one crucial incident; a boy kills a German soldier in the woods during the Second World War. The story recurs in Armando’s work in many forms.: an ill-fated event, a victim that becomes a perpetrator, a guilty forest that witnessed everything but remains silent. Was Armando involved in the fateful event or did he invent a tragedy of mythological proportions? Filmmakers Sjors Swierstra and Roelof Jan Minneboo go in search of answers.

Armando has utilized symbols and metaphors of strength: flags and trees are depicted almost abstractly. This is not so surprising, coming from an artist who has lived in Berlin since 1979, a city inextricably bound up with WW II. Armando has always been fascinated by this period in history, that has determined his youth, and he is directly inspired by the history of Berlin. By showing documentary pictures of the war, the camera shoots the landscapes of Armando's paintings and the ideas behind them. The film records the construction of an immense flag, made of grey clay, and shows its function through authentic images. Armando expresses his interpretations of the past in an aesthetic way. Armando is a portrait of an engaged person, a film as he himself probably would have made it: associative, personal, but also aloof, as an interpretation of a period of time.