A Silent Box
2025, 30 min.
A collection of recordings, images and 16mm paintings gathered together across the meanderings of a single year, A Silent Box explores the states of being which grow out of the grief and alienation of migration and familial separation. A separation which can weave its way across the experience of a single generation.
The unstable feeling of longing to ‘return’ to something that is always too distant — yet within sight; often pictured — yet more truly, unimaginable; sufficiently understood — yet ultimately unknowable; fundamental to one’s self-recognition and internal foundation — yet also a seemingly primordial ‘other,’ that one wishes to meet in perpetuity.
A heritage of ancestors, histories and experiences which are primarily relegated to the unconscious. Internal dissidence and contradiction.
The uniquely beautiful sensation of eeriness and the haunting of ‘the beyond’ that this creates within a person comes to hold a mystical quality. A quality which the film attempts to surface. A slow-paced, scenic fever dream. An endless pot of solemness.
See Program Notes.
Stills:
os-cil-late
2023, 4 min.
Kodak Tri-X Reversal Super 8 film eco-developed with lavender, rose petals, hydrangeas and balboa sunset trumpetvines.
Produced as part of the Cosmic Queerities workshop by XINEMA and EPFC North, July 2023.