Audio-visual notes on the encounter with 93 year old painter Tatjana, who is loosing her eyesight. Gestures gently observed through the tips of her hair interfere with thoughts about the sense of time and a dreamlike reality. Moving images follow the painter's alignment relying more than ever on her experienced hand and imagination and exploring sensory perception beyond seeing.
Director’s note
I use my vision as though it was a sense of touch. Touching becomes the metaphor for the process of seeing. I’m following the idea of a way of looking where the eyes themselves function as organs of touch, gliding along the image surface. Haptic visuality allows a closer contact to the body, blurring the distinction between the observing and observed subject. Noema is a kind of memory and an imagination describing a personal encounter through the eye of the camera. Does observing bring me closer or does it establish distance? How do I approach a subject with my camera? I gently apply blurring and reflections to avoid a penetrating gaze: Gestures embody life experience, hand shadows play with water drops, tips of hair merge into grass contours, sunlight is entangled in wooden cracks. Close-ups of painting hands and images of the painter's residence are the visible coordinates when creating and dissolving closeness and distance. The voice of my protagonist mostly appears bodiless and off-camera while the camera eye searches for details. Her language creates the sound to the film. The camera focuses on the canvas where seconds later fingertips smear smudges of colour. We share the same image surface. This tactile way of looking leaves the actual image frame. The edges of the representable and the imagined are blurred. Visions of dream and reality interfere with each other. Reality emerges through the interaction of two perspectives who share a visual sensitivity while shooting.
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