The work re-imagines Cocteau’s Jeune Homme et la Morte to tell the story from the perspective of the Young Girl/Death Woman, attempting to remember the moment of the Young Man’s death, to recapture as well as redefine it. The visuals are anchored in a narration that has two sources. First in keeping with Cocteau’s use of the fairy tale as well as over-narration, the retelling by an omniscient narrator is marked by the convention ‘Once upon a time…’, which sets the quest for the elusive site of the story (a city, a fountain, the walls of a tomb, a field of poppies). The second source is the voice of the Young Girl/Death Woman, who narrates a counter story, her desire to be present and unique, the sensual exploration of the relationships of their bodies, grounding their reality in the “experience at the touch of a tactile tendril” and the microscopic enunciation of the body (“hand, back of the neck”, “your hand on my waist”). The visible apparatus (camera in her eyes, mp3 players) echo Cocteau’s use of mirrors across ‘realities’, where other invisible spaces are alluded to.
The film was chosen as an Official Selection for the 2022 Berlin International Art Film Festival, the ScreenDance Miami Festival 2022 and the 2021 Athens Digital Arts Festival. 1400 works were submitted from over 40 countries, the film is one of 350 selected.
Concept, libretto, camera, performance, editing: Ana Sánchez-Colberg
Experimental film (13:52, including credits)
