letter

An irrelevant letter for the most of people
2012
12' 23

The film, largely inspired by the book, Camera Lucida by Ronald Barthes, was made in a way that it testifies the self-deceptive moments during the filming process; when the illusion occurs, that the immediate moments could be mummified and kept intact.

In the film, the intimacy of the filmmaker's experience is highlighted – the sentiments of the time and places, where she with her camera was present. However, the film materialized as an independent body only proves the obsoleteness of the attempts: it becomes detached from the initial experience. The moments take different meanings within the context of the film.

The shifts between the scenes follow a physical and emotional journey, which the filmmaker took in a day. It begins in the Duomo Square, where the camera observes a stranger in public, who seems to be waiting for somebody. The voyeuristic camera continues to arrive in a playground where children are playing on an inflated clown slides. The massive but flimsy object shakes at children's climb, as if it's alive. The subtitle as a silent narration rambles on the mortality of the filmed objects and time.

The viewers are then invited to a room, where only the fragmented images of the place are on display. The filmmaker performs an anxiety-driven play with the objects inside of the room. It shows how she tries to overcome a feeling of alienation from her environment by acting "the filming". The camera is empowered to be a time-filler, as the images of the space are archived as the proof of her presence. The ritual of documenting ends with the ceremonial walk through a street where most of its width is blocked by the construction site. The path's ambiguous destination directs the viewer to the most intimate place of the day, back in her hotel room with a naked man lying on bed and reading a letter.

The words formerly spoken in the subtitles must have continued in a letter, of which content is unseen to the viewer: only the man in front of the camera can read it. The letter becomes a kind of invisible and immaterial object standing between the filmmaker and the viewer. As she is cheated by the "free" choice to film her most private moment, the distance is created between the camera and the present moment–now a memory. That moment was enveloped and would probably never be opened again. Therefore, the letter might be the only thing that will remain perpetual but also the most irrelevant.


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