Close-up

When the Rotterdam director Nanouk Leopold made her début in 2001 at the IFFR with Îles flottantes, this was the start of a beautiful film career. Her following features have been screened at big festivals such as Berlin and Cannes. It’s hardly possible to get any bigger, or is it? For the IFFR she is making a film that will be projected more than life size on a wall in our own city.
For this Urban Screen project, Leopold cooperated with the visual artist Daan Emmen, with whom she has formed the Beeldcollectief Leopold Emmen. Leopold and Emmen here play with the conventions of film and image in public space. They have made a six-hour close-up, the most powerful image in a film. Their Close-up is, however, not a film in the classic sense of the word. They also don’t call it a film but a film image.
Most viewers of Close-up will be chance passers-by: people who have not consciously chosen to look at this image – whereas a cinema visitor does. The passers-by glance and then carry on with what they were doing. As a result, they decide the rhythm of this film, which is dependent on where and when they look, for how long and how often. The image changes slowly, so that the viewer who comes past at different times always sees something slightly different. A face looks at the viewer. But who is looking at whom?