[-empyre-] Lady in Wight- talking pictures

[Christina McPhee]

http://www.hecticred.net/pages/1.films.html

Eliza's films


On Dec 31, 2008, at 11:42 PM, eliza fernbach wrote:

> Hello,
> Christina suggested I think about how Neal's process relates to the  
> way I have been working on my latest film "Rumour Becomes A Line"
>
> ...The most potent connection I can see right now is the process...I  
> too was inspired by text. A poem by the Canadian Anne Simpson whose  
> collection "Light Falls Through You" includes a series on the Trojan  
> War.
> The moment I have been exploring in the film which is now in post  
> production, is a short sigh following Queen Hecuba's surrender to  
> the death of one of her 19 children.
>
> The moment is now blown out to be six or seven minutes long and like  
> Neal I have spent a lot of time culling images. Everyone does indeed  
> experience time in a particular way and I like the idea that moment  
> can become an hour under someone else's gaze. There is also an  
> implied moment explored in the film. The action of closing shutters  
> or doors and leaning against them is a visual cliche in cinema now.  
> Femme fatales and damsels in all sorts of distress have paused  
> against doors they close behind themselves in just about every  
> possible situation the cinema allows. There is an image though that  
> has never been shown but exists in the minds of viewers almost  
> automatically...That is the close up of the hands behind the  
> chracaters' back.
> We've never seen it but we know it somehow. I ended up shooting the  
> shot from above the Queen as she closed the shutters and still  
> haven't quite captured the picture that is still lodged in my  
> mind...happily in reaching for that particular moment, the process  
> revealed a stream of much more dynamic scenes...and a film was born.
> I also agree with Neal about reflection revealing direction...The  
> theme of travel in my films would appear self evident just in a scan  
> of the titles ( "Commute", "Baggage", "Rest Stop"...) but I hadn't  
> really acknowledged my fascination with the timeline of life and the  
> ways it is navigated until I had to present the films together...
> In the short loop "Starting at the end of the Line" I connected the  
> line and it remains eternal for me now...we walk the line of a life,  
> we become the line, the line forms us and we walk it again...I am my  
> shadow is me I am my shadow...
>
> Gosh Christina - thanks for your suggestion.
> Happy '09 everyone,
> eliza
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Christina McPhee
http://christinamcphee.net

DANM Digital Arts and New Media
Porter Faculty Services
University of California at Santa Cruz
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