ECHO by Lieke Bezemer: Poetically Speaks on the Trauma of Sexual Abuse

Lieke Bezemer’s short film ECHO touches on the director’s own personal trauma which arose from her experience with Sexual Abuse. This powerful short will be screening at Manchester Film Festival this weekend.

Synopsis: ECHO is the embodiment of the hidden world within a damaged mind. A cinematic essay that exposes the invisible processes of trauma – visualized solely by natural phenomena, set against the snowy backdrops of Hokkaido, North Japan.

Told in a poetic yet confronting manner, ECHO bridges the gap between one’s disconnected inner- and the outside world. More specifically, the inner world of the director herself. Working her cherished combination of nature and film enabled her to finally begin to open up, acknowledge, and study the very parts of herself she fought to deny for years. These reflections resulted in ECHO: rare and vulnerable insight into her psyche. It allows the audience to take a deep dive into the overwhelmingly complex aftermath of trauma caused by sexual abuse.

Director Lieke Bezemer has developed a strong focus on storytelling, research, and concept development, predominantly focusing on non-fictional narratives after specializing as a director and also a cinematographer. Her photography background compliments her passion for nature documentaries as she combines these two skills to create art with an artistic background resulting in the urge to portrait hidden stories, whether or not nature-related, from unexpected angles. This includes experimenting with adding layering in the narrative.

Producer Elyse de Waard’s love for producing was born while she was studying to become an animator at the HKU (Utrecht). Elyse started to train as an animation producer which led to her producing several 3D and 2D animation shorts, one of which Huilbui by Sanna de Vries won the Wildcard at the Dutch Film Festival (NFF). De Waard finds it essential to work on projects with meaning, projects with an impact meant to help and/or motivate the audience to work towards change.

ECHO uses a metaphorical approach and found her language in Japanese mythology. The mythological spirits, hiding in Japan’s most rural places, are known as ‘yokai’ and believed to shapeshift themselves into natural phenomena of our world. Their unique ability to roam both the ‘hidden’ ghost- and ‘real’ outer world, bridges the communication gap and exposes the hidden dimensions of trauma: through landscapes and animals. Thus creating a world tangible enough to then finally be put into words. The raw and poignant voice-over, voiced by the director herself, starts the much-needed dialogue that up until now stayed suppressed and unspoken.

The beautiful cinematography was created by Nick Tucker and ECHO was edited by Erik van der Bijl. ECHO will be screening at Manchester film Festival from March 11th – March 14th.

The crew includes Director Lieke Bezemer, Writers Lieke Bezemer, Director of Photography Lieke Bezemer, Nick Tucker Production Elyse de Waard, Camera Assitant Ryan Whitfield, Editor Erik van der Bijl, Sound Designer Tyas van den Bergh, Grading Elf Godefroy, Translation Tiger Shigetake.

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