“The film creates a space where history, poetry and politics collide in what we can perhaps describe as an unconventional blend of literary homage and visual essay.”

In a text he wrote to fellow poet Paul Demeny, often referred to as the “Letter of the Seer”, Arthur Rimbaud famously stated “je est un autre” (“I am another”) – theorists have debated whether “an other” or “another” is the most appropriate translation, particularly since something as small as a space between letters can speak volumes about the intentions of such a statement. It’s a destabilising declaration that echoes enormously throughout his work, which has become the foundation for Uchronia, a fascinating film by Fil Ieropoulos (in collaboration with screenwriter Foivos Dousos), in which this sense of fractured identity and the incredulity towards the self becomes the focus. Inspired by Une Saison en Enfer, one of his landmark works, the film follows a metaphorical ghost of Rimbaud as he moves through time, observing the various avenues of queerness that he sought to describe in his time, and how it has been reflected in cultural and social developments over the past century. Partially a literary homage, partially an offbeat provocation, the film creates a space where history, poetry and politics collide in what we can perhaps describe as an unconventional blend of literary homage and visual essay. The themes are presented in an unconventional biopic, one that focuses less on Rimbaud’s life and more on his ideas, and how they have evolved into a centuries-spanning legacy. Compressing decades of queer discourse into 97 minutes, Ieropoulos (whose own Avant-Drag! was a complex provocation in itself) creates a fascinating piece of filmmaking that unsettles common ideologies and presents them as something much more profound, while maintaining a careful order that guides its many complex themes forward.

As with his previous film, Ieropoulos sets out to explore a few core themes, establishing some bold ideas and allowing them to flourish organically. He adopts a multidisciplinary approach that combines fragments of archival footage drawn from over a century of visual media, coupling them with newly shot segments in which various actors play notable historical figures who engage in passionate recreations of iconic works, and tying everything together with Rimbaud’s writing. This is not a film driven by coherence or which intends to be viewed as a linear work, but rather a multimodal collage of many different ideas which can exist in dialogue with each other. This is a film that resists categorisation – it is not purely a documentary, nor is it a fictional work, but rather a blend of both. It uses Rimbaud’s influential writings to create a series of monologues and conversations that exist somewhere between performance art and historical reconstruction, hovering between the two and fixating on the deliberately ambiguous space in between, emphasising a kind of instability that contributes to the discussions that drive the film. As a forerunner of the surrealist movement, Rimbaud’s work had to be handled in a way that reflected his own artistic intentions and perspective – the jaggedness of the narrative prevents any neat resolution, arguments overlap, and there are frequent moments where abstraction takes the focus. It may seem disparaging to say that a film deliberately chooses to be difficult, but the director’s intentional choice to lean into the incomprehensible feels more poetic than it does indulgent.

Many different ideas pulsate throughout Uchronia, but perhaps the most effective way to understand this film is to reduce all of them into a single question that seems to be guiding the entire project: when it comes to the act of revolution, what can the past teach us, especially when it feels so unfinished? Throughout the film, the viewer accompanies a seemingly immoral Rimbaud as he leaps through time, encountering a range of historical figures. Each one represents a different era in queer history, particularly in terms of the act of rebelling against the status quo. These are not just trivial inclusions of famous figures, but rather complex conversations that take place across eras, placing them in dialogue with one another. The film posits that the queer struggle has been ongoing for centuries, predating Rimbaud and likely extending far beyond our own lives, and through presenting Uchronia as a speculative piece (the title itself roughly translates to the “what if” genre of alternative histories), he’s able to show how each fragment of resistance that has taken place over time echoes with all those that came before and after. The precise message can sometimes be difficult to comprehend, but it is clear that this is a story built around the politics of queer existence, where simply being visible within the mainstream culture can dismantle systems of oppression, even if the results take longer to emerge. This is an example of a film that seeks to provoke more than preach, and the questions that propel the narrative tend to veer towards the rhetorical, making it quite evident that the director is not interested in creating false resolutions, and instead placing the task of interpreting some of these more challenging conversations in the hands of the audience.

The most appropriate description of Uchronia would be a film that exists at the intersection between the cerebral and the corporeal, anchored by philosophical debates that are infused with a kind of tangible, carnal anger, which are in turn undercut by the visceral desire for knowledge and the urgency with which we seek answers. This is not a film that intends to streamline its arguments to provide answers to its complex questions, and it often seems to be relishing in its own opacity; a bold and ultimately worthwhile approach, since it emphasises the complex combination of a variety of ideas, ranging from the political to the poetic. A wildly imaginative work that builds itself around the idea of an ongoing, never-ending revolution that takes many different forms depending on those involved, but which remains consistent with a long lineage of revolutionaries over time. It’s a film that dares to be unruly in a cinematic landscape where clarity is a priority and where accessibility is not negotiable. For a film about people who proudly occupy the margins of society, this feels like a steadfast celebration of their efforts and a worthy tribute to the contributions that they made to queer culture. Told with a unique rhythm in which dense intellectual comments are punctuated by evocative filmmaking that turns this film into a mentally stimulating sensory experience, it reinforces key themes and creates an actively engaging and provocative celebration of queer identity and the many fearless individuals who helped define it over time.

(c) Image copyright – FYTA Films