Way My It Did I is a 2019 film by Maria Anastassiou commissioned for New Geographies, an arts project which highlights overlooked or unexpected places in East Anglia
“The title of the film is a nod to the eponymous Frank Sinatra song – as sung backwards by Filipino seafarers working on a commercial vessel docked in the Port of Tilbury on the Thames Estuary just a few miles east of London, United Kingdom.
This port town has historically been a point of entry for migrants in to the UK as well as a major commercial port. Set against the transient landscape of the Thames Estuary, this is a place laden with traces of the ever-shifting global narratives of empire, commerce and migrations.
Shot entirely on a hand-cranked 16mm film camera with the participants actively involved in the production of the film, the film aims to question official narratives and histories within the current political context of the UK, whilst meditating on the realities of living and working in and around a port town.
With a slippery relationship between sound and image, the film draws attention to its own making, in an attempt to challenge the production of “truths” or “facts” in our current “post-truth” media environment. In the process this film re-affirms our relationship to the “real” as experienced and captured through the chosen technology with its limitations and potentials a conscious part of the film’s
aesthetic.
Produced in 2019, a year that has been dominated by the Brexit narrative, and the hostile environment with its xenophobic undertones, the filmmaker worked with local migrant groups, including Romanian workers, west-African asylum seekers and Filipino seafarers to explore shared experiences of citizenship and belonging.”