A rose in a glass vase on the windowsill. Soft Vermeer-like light falling into the dusky room, and playing through the crystal-clear water. Most of all, this yields a ‘beautiful’ picture, well-framed, wonderful colours, tone and shades. Throughout the video, the camera behaves like the eye of someone who wants to drink in this beauty to his heart’s content. Concentration and a zen-like focus on the aesthetic experience makes the components unfold. Change of light, shifts of colour, blurred spots, red-and-black counterpoints and more of that kind, build up an intensity that culminates in the viewer’s literally being sucked into the image. Or rather, into one single spot which, as a component aspect, probably contains all the beauty of the whole – analogous to the Proustian yellow spot on a wall in Vermeer’s ‘View on Delft’. Through this wormhole, our gaze disappears, to be chastened and thereby to adopt a totally different perspective.
Also in this combined programme
-
Bouquets 26-27
Bouquets 26 and 27 are part of a series of one minute films, structured visually in the camera during filming covering a variety of subjects.… -
L’étreinte
Light creates movement. Black and White functions in this film as some sort of developer. There is something going on here that lies between death,… -
Pony Changes Everything
A man explains global currency markets without the help of his formerly trusty rockin’ talkin’ pony, who is missing. Without the pony, the world is… -
Heaven’s Gate
With Heaven’s Gate, Ahwesh employs a strategy similar to that used in 73 Suspect Words: against a blank screen, a metronomic procession of single words… -
Spaced Odditties
Pictures from a black and white documentary about the life in fresh water, recomposed on the celluloid ribbon by an image by image collage to… -
Van de koele meren des doods
A lady in a Seventeenth Century dress stands on the edge of a lake and looks out over the water. When we approach her the…
Film details
- Country of production
- Japan
- Year
- 2002
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2005
- Length
- 12'
- Medium/Format
- Betacam SP PAL