WOMEN
with
Charlotte Vitaioli
Jemima Burrill
Renata Poljak
Charlotte Vitaioli, L’Heure Bleue, 2018
Production centre d’art contemporain Passerelle, Brest
This is the fourth part of a series of works (see Les Nébuleuses and Albertine disparue) in which the figure of the wandering young woman, absent or recumbent, is ubiquitous. L’Heure Bleue highlights the rites of boat-graves, a feature of ancestral cultures, in particular among the Vikings and the Egyptians. A subject taken up by Arnold Bocklin in the imagination of L’Ile des Morts, a painting where solitude is magnified by the presence of a character who seems to be sailing towards what lies yonder.
As I wrote the screenplay, I thought of the figure of the innocent young woman in flight, peculiar to the Gothic novel, who is being forever persecuted by a malevolent force.
The painting titled L’Arrivée du pardon de St Anne, by Alfred Louis Guilloux, on view in the Quimper Museum of Fine Arts, also influenced me a lot. It involves a religious Breton procession, where girls placed on boats bring to shore the star-spangled banner of the Patron Saint. CV
Jemima Burrill, Harvest, 2018, 11 min 11 sec
The anti feminine creature who goes into the wild, head shaven, boots on, Ikea bag in tow. She is Tank Girl, a superhero, a woman who can do anything, makes her own way and makes her own story. She then decides to be feminine again, because she can, and dances. She makes the dress to mesmerise herself and becomes a shaven Cinderella, an anti-Cinderella who will delicately pick up her skirt to navigate nature, to climb the rock, to feel invincible as the two kinds of woman she is. The hard and the soft like the nature around her.
This is not a film commenting on nature, the nature is the background to this woman. She lives with it and makes a dress to make an artificial thing to stand out, creating a costume for her dance. So she can conquer this place and stand tall dressed as she likes, as she likes.
Mostly this film is about the act of doing it. Its first title was « She get’s out of her chair ». It is harvesting the creative, making things happen and enjoying the results, spreading arms wide. JB
Film entitled Partenza express the global insecurity of contemporary society and the fragility of human existence. Metaphorically, they address a story about departure, waiting and separation, dictated by migrations. In the early 20th century, it was usual yet traumatic for men to leave Croatian islands (mostly bound for the countries of South America) due to poverty and hunger. One of these tragic stories is weaved into the author’s family history. The film is inspired by the life story of Renata’s great-grandmother who lived on the island of Brač, whose husband went to Chile looking for work in order to secure his family’s future. Like many of the island’s women, she waited for her husband who, like many of the men, never returned.
Partenza (Italian for departure, and used in many of Croatia’s island and coastal dialects) is inspired by the contemporary tragedies of migrants at sea. The author uses this phenomenon as a connecting thread and a reminder that not so long ago we were in the same boat. It links two stories – the one of Croatia from the early 20th century and today’s plight of African and Asian refugees. This film, using migrant and refugee stories which repeat throughout history, very powerfully and suggestively points to the human condition as fragile and susceptible to political, economic and social changes.
Renata Poljak, Partenza, 2016, 10 mn 35
Production : REA Association