this is a video project that i started one winter, two years ago, and which has grown ever since. i have now finished the second part, called The Waiting, which is concerned with adulthood, while the first part, First Snow, depicted childhood - as you can see, the trilogy aims at a poetical investigation into the three ages with their different stories, told using winter as a common metaphor. and from the point of view of one woman. in the second part, the girl in love with the snow queen (that you might or might not remember from the first part) has now turned into a young woman in love with long winters and waiting. this is her world.
i should warn you that this part is a little longer, about 15 minutes - don't feel bad if you don't have the patience or the time for it, there are more pressing things to do on a bleak winter day than look at even more snow! :-)
for those of you who prefer and can watch it on youtube, here
..
beauty
ReplyDeleteI love this woman waiting. This white woman and her bridge of wonders between so many possible worlds.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any words for this right now. I am speechless and lost in wordless thoughts...felt...felt meanings. The source of words. I will try to feel some up in awhile and come back and try to say something which will fall short, inevitably. But maybe you will see through that and see what could not be said.
ReplyDeleteSans voix...
ReplyDeleteIf you will pardon the heresy, i must tell you that i thought of 'Dans le noir du temps.' At first it was because of the music. This is quite understandable. But then a clearer impression distilled. JLG's short film, shorter than yours, is about time; it's about last minutes of youth, memory, love, silence and, as always, inexorable longing, a "nostalgia for the infinite" (his own words). Of course, it's a metaphor for waiting, waiting for the last minutes of the cinema.
ReplyDeleteYou make me very proud, dearest. The waiting is almost bearable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h70BW5flKJ4
in toate acele rasuflari fierbinti creand opacul eu vad spunandu-se viata,viata noastra,cea pe care am dori-o in asteptarea fara de pata.am asteptat mult trilogia,in fiecare zi,nu stiu daca asteptarea a fost cum trebuia,dupa acest film o sa ma gandesc mai mult la asteptare; insa ca am stiut ca aici voi gasi tot ceea ce este - zapada,pura,ninsoarea,niciodata prinsa si stiuta cu adevarat de nimeni,ceaiul ,vietile celorlalti,curgand prin noi.dar ,ca intotdeauna,eu incremenita am ramas in fata gesturilor tale,a acelei albeti,a acelui fara de graba,ca si cand getsurile tale ar pregati mereu ceaiul,un ceai tot mai fin - si doar cine calatoareste in dor poate sa il guste;tot mai indicibile nuantele,amestecandu-se intr-un bol frust.
ReplyDeletece bine in IARNA...
I liked all the looking through glass. I'm very keen on photos through windows just now myself.
ReplyDeleteMusic well chosen here too.
x
I missed you so much!
ReplyDeleteHello my beautiful friend- another beautiful masterpeice.
ReplyDeleteHow I adore, the way you have captured the rythm of the season flowing through our blood.the rythm of waiting knowing that the great spirit breaths through the earth.
thankyou
sending you white dream kisses
Prospero, you're right in a way. These are such different films, though, that direct comparison is perhaps inappropriate. The similarity is far greater at the start and then lessens as the images become more melodramatic, more obvious, and less authored. Personally, the later film has more subtlety and speaks more of the interior than the exterior; its beauty is not bathetic and the dark monochrome - in its (almost) continuousness brings, as snow brings, ambiguity rather than contrast. And Schnittke.
ReplyDeleteThis remains beyond words. It does not require them. JLG's would be lessened by their removal, more so as time progresses.
Thank you, too, for your contribution.
Your creativity knows no limits... and after winter, spring will come again
ReplyDeleteThere was this snowflake and there was this woman. Each falling through some same moment in life, each just one among many falling in that moment. But this one snowflake kissed her cheek and died there. Its soul trickled down to the very corner of her mouth, where she licked it up with a sideward flick of her tongue. "I'll be with you in awhile," she murmured.
ReplyDeletenow that was just what i was needing to spur me into doing a bit of work i've had lying aropund for a while. great stuff!
ReplyDeleteOH! I must bow too, to the music of Kate St.John, Lunaire, Prospero, Arvo Port, and Alfred Schnittke. (I hope I spelled all those names correctly!) And then we have the music of Roxana's voice, her filming, and her vision. It all comes together as something very special. Thanks.
ReplyDeletethere is something deeply wrong about words
ReplyDeletehow is it i feel coming away from this that everyone should see this film? and yet no one. it is so deeply private and yet universal. what a strange sensation. what an important journey. how beautiful and painful and right.
xo
erin
oh and yes thankyou for the lovely music of prospero and I hope mythopolis' words arent copyrighted and for the lovely music of your voice my beautiful friend...
ReplyDeleteyour narration is wonderful, "snow is always last year's snow" - that will stay with me, "not even I but who if not me". gorgeous images as always, especially the snow falling like pieces of gold. I also love Spiegel im Spiegel
ReplyDeleteErin, it would be difficult not to agree about that enigmatic line on language.
ReplyDeleteYour idea of (∃◆((∀(ι)) see this film) where ((∀(ι)∈[homininis])⋀￢(∀(ι)∈[homininis]))) is enthralling indeed! A brace may be missing.
( ;
Roxanna, I just posted a comment on mythopolis' blog, after his pointing us to your 2nd film in the trilogy...I, too, appreciate the music of your voice in this exquisite work... I am imagining the child is your daughter, and how she is nurtured by hearing the music of your voice daily...really beautiful piece, Roxanna...thanks for sharing....from Judi, friend of Dan (mythopolis)
ReplyDeleteSo extremely personal and poignant. Everything fits together beautifully — the words, the sound of your voice, black and white, night and day, time of year, of course the snow, and the music. I especially liked the part when you were reading the definition of longing and you layered the narration. That was gorgeous and so original. That 15 minutes just flew by...
ReplyDeleteLiebste Roxana,
ReplyDeleteich habe Deinen kleinen Film wahrlich genossen und es fällt mir wirklich schwer, etwas hier hinzuzusetzen. Es gab - natürlich :-) - einen Ansatz von Traurigkeit, aber vor allem habe ich eine friedliche Stimmung verspürt und diesen ganz Dir eigenen Text und Deine so schöne Stimme haben mich doch betroffen gemacht...!
Einen wunderbar sonnigen weissen Tag wünsche ich Dir, wunderbare Freundin!
Renée
much better indeed to use unpromising winter as a common metaphor for the three human ages... much better than unreliably frolicky spring!
ReplyDeletethis is beauty beyond the beautiful, spoken from the very heart of being itself, from what it means to be and to be conscious of the rupture that being implies ... what else is there, but to long to be inside one of the others, and to know both the impossibility of it and the inevitability of continuing to long?
ReplyDelete"we must get back to the trembling stroke" -- the first gesture of language, and perhaps even the first gestures prior to language ... the film does this at the end, no? -- the haunting closure on her breath? surely this is the first trembling stroke? the hollowing of the mouth for breath is not only the first gesture of speech, but breath is also the moment when consciousness is more than self-consciousness, the beginning of awareness in the world, the primal in-and-out that is mirrored in all other transactions, in sex and the coming and going of tides and the seasons and the moon ... it is certainly your voice,your breath, that carries the film ... these images, beautiful by themselves, are carried on the long pure wave of your voice ...
so much to say .. i didn't know where to begin, and i don't know where to stop :-) ... coming back over and over, living within this ...
i don't know how to thank you, my dear, dear friends here - i want to thank all of you for your incredible empathy and openness and patience and understanding. i am truly overwhelmed and more touched than i could ever say.
ReplyDeletemore than any other film i have made, this one is special to me, in so many ways. thank you again for understanding that, and for your willingness to share these moments with me.
using 'video' to express myself is something new to me, and very different than photography. in a way, i think it allows a deeper (or at least more complex) investigation of the self than photography alone - and it has always been about that on the Bridge, or everything i do.
so, to say it once more (it never seems enough), i am very grateful to all of you who had the patience to watch it (also to those who have tried and given up at some point :-), but the gesture of trying is important too) - and the willingness to open themselves to it, to ponder it for a while, or simply to ask themselves the question what it is to feel like this about oneself and the world, to try to understand the perspective of this woman in a window, here...
all this means to me more than i could ever say...
mts,
ReplyDeletemaybe her waiting is simply about beauty. as in the line i have here on the Bridge under my profile, by Nishida, which sums up everything for me: the feeling of beauty is the feeling of 'muga': no-self or ecstasy...
your constant and challenging and ever so attentive presence here honours me.
gentle,
this woman is smiling now, from among all the possible worlds, she is grateful to be in this one, where you are so close to her.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteyou know how overwhelmed i am with your reaction and your kind and endless support for me and this film... the fact that you were lost in it, without words, would have been enough for me, and still you said and did much, much more... thank you for recommending it to your friends, for posting it on your site as well, it is my turn to be speechless in front of so much generosity and empathy.
chere Plum', merci de tout coeur!
Prospero,
ReplyDeletefor a while i couldn't watch the Godard because of your "If you will pardon the heresy", it made me laugh too much :-)
then, i did... actually i do understand why you thought of it in this context. and i think you are right. and somehow pondering this film right now (great timing as always) has made many questions arise, or intensified my own preoccupations with some topics. (in fact, isn't this an indispensable criterion in the judgment of a work of art? how much it challenges us, not (only) how much one can identity with it).
you will see what i mean in my next post ('history').
and also this very important question: can one like/love something which is totally different from one's own style/vision/thoughts? somebody has recently told me that it is not possible, and that i lie if i say it is. i do maintain that it is entirely possible, for some people, of course, i hate and dread generalizations, and more than this, that i am often fascinated with things which are entirely beyond what i would call my usual 'affinities'. here, i had to discover that i liked this Godard, even if... you know how i feel, his views on cinema etc. are entirely opposite to mine and his overintellectual approach is the last thing i could identify with.
(thank you)
ps. by a coincidence, it also starts with a dialogue between a young girl and an adult, around a fire, as my first part of the Trilogy :-)
mts (again :-)
ReplyDeletethank you for sharing with us your Godard-reaction, it has also been very important to me, in itself and by way of comparison to my own video.
unfortunately there was a problem with the you tube video, if you followed Prospero's link, i was puzzled to discover that the subtitles were entirely wrong, i don't know whether it was a kind of bad joke or no. so i am afraid that your reception might have been impaired by this. i tried to find another one with the correct english subtitles, but it's a shame, it doesn't seem to be available :-(
you raise a very interesting point: the relation between narration and the rest, it had been on my mind as well. i wondered what one could have made of my video without the narration. you say that Godard's would be lessened by its absence, the implication being that mine wouldn't be. i totally agree about Godard, i am not sure about mine. also, i am not sure that it is a fault, that a film would be lessened by removing the narration, or if, on the contrary, this shouldn't be perceived as a fault, if the narration seems unnecessary. hard to say - cinema makes possible this unique combination of sound, words, visuals, and thus they should all play their part and complete each other.
(in comparison with photography, this can be perceived as both an advantage and as a disadvantage, it depends where one stands here: i argued somewhere sometime ago in a photography/versus/ film-discussion that i thought this overabundance of signifiers which is the mark of the cinema to be a weakness compared to photography)
Cerasela, ce încântare scrisoarea ta din IARNĂ, eu aşa o văd, nu un simplu comentariu ci o scrisoare aşa, de demult, cum numai Sonia ar mai fi primit... :-)
ReplyDeleteşi cât de frumoasă şi de pură mă văd eu, reflectată în cuvintele tale, ca în acele imagini albe, de pe apa geamului, mereu unduitoare...
îţi mulţumesc, cea dragă...
Rachel, thank you, i could have bet you wouldn't like it (being rather on the sentimental or emotional side, as it is), i am glad you found it interesting enough to watch! a most unexpected comment which brought me much joy.
Emese, but you can't imagine how much i miss you here!!!
Madeleine,
ReplyDeletei am happy you liked it. "the rhythm of the season flowing through our blood" is another important aspect of it...
Owen,
it certainly will, that much we can be sure of :-)
swiss, this must be the most succinct comment, even for you! :-P (i am glad you found it inspirational, but now that i have started to look forward to that, you should really get to work ;-)
erin, i wondered whether you would watch the film, and whether you would like it, i wasn't sure. but i intensely wanted that you do, if only for the essential image of the woman in a window, that kind of connectedness. you said such an important thing! i am happy i managed to make something able to express the personal so deeply and yet to be meaningful for others too - this is rarely easy, and some people can and most surely will/would dislike such a personal , even raw attempt at expression. i hadn't thought of this, but right now it feels that my little drop/window-video on the Tome is the counterpart of this one, a distant (not in the sense of cold, though), purified gaze.
ReplyDeleteMarion,
ReplyDeletewhile i was reading your comment i was secretly smiling, thinking of the immense joy i would have to make such a film about the SEA, oh! to be able to... it is such a dream... snow is also water, isn't it? somehow you must be attracted to it as well, woman of the sea as you are :-) (though perhaps not, it is much less common there than here).
Judi, it is such a joy to have you here! i have already answered you on myth's blog... i am particularly touched that you like my voice, others here have talked about that too, while i had been very worried about the narration (my english being one of the reasons) and i had almost given up the film because of that, i feared it would ruin the rest!
Stickup, i had to laugh here, i will make a confession (from the production workshop :-) i couldn't get that part right when reading, there were some difficult sounds in those definitions, so i had to come up with a (desperate) solution and it is then when the idea with the layering came to me, it was much easier to record broken pieces like that :-)
ReplyDeletei am so glad it worked, and in the end i too liked it even better that the original idea :-)
aaah liebste Wolkenprinzessin, wie sehr haben mich Deine Worte erfreut, wie sehr... dass der Film Dir gefaellt, ja, das war so ein tiefer Wunsch von mir. aus mehreren Gruenden, aber einer davon war von ganz grosser Bedeutung, ich hoffe, Du hast die kleine Einzelheit bemerkt, auf die ich jetzt anspielen moechte: die Geschichte mit dem Hund und dem kranken Mann... mehr sage ich nicht! :-)
sei ganz lieb umarmt...
bis sehr bald!
I wasn't being precise enough. What I was meaning to point toward was that Godard's film requires text either explicitly or by implication, in order to be understood. If there were no text then the assembled scenes would not connect. Visually, Godard's film consists in a series of scenes in which different actors perform different acts in different locations at different times. I am reluctant to use the word 'actor' as relating to the body of the dead concentration camp victim, but it's visually possible that this scene is constructed without some text (even if it is remembered text from someone other than Godard). Your film makes sense at a visual level, though it too would be lessened by the the removal of the voice-over: it is clear, from visual cues alone, that this is a - words are elusive when it comes to such matters, so I cannot be precise - but there is one 'watcher' throughout the film, and several others who are being 'watched' by her. The others' voices are never heard, and what they say is only conveyed by the images and by your narration. If you remove the narration you are left, presumably, with a selection of visually presented moments from their lives. This is true, and clear, irrespective of whether one can understand the words or not (you still have the woman watching and the others doing things which form aspects of lives which you do not share, and cannot share, as you imply in the narration, in fact). Your film seems to allude to the insufficiencies of text, if not of language. (N.B. 'language' here refers to the innate capacity, while 'text' specifically refers to the technology of writing and reading: these two terms are so commonly and transparently conflated that it is hard not to think of them as the same, which makes it hard to talk about. That it is hard to avoid this conflation does not mean that the difference isn't there, it only means it's difficult to 'see' or express. Language is an innate ability, as is vision, but text is and always has been fundamentally technological and not inborn. These are facts, not stories.) Understanding the exact dictionary entries that are visually presented is not necessary to comprehending the film, though understanding that they are dictionary entries, or at least examples from lists of written textual representations of words perhaps is necessary (the dictionary is illustrated in one instance, to, which adds to this distinction), the magnifying glass emphasizes the visual aspect of text but says nothing about language. You speak of, and then pictorially represent, the very first texts, and suggest that we need to go back further to the earliest markings, non-evanescent tokens (as the first texts were entirely non-linguistic but were tallying systems this seems an interesting and productive point to make, with its implication that in order to understand ourselves we need at least to acknowledge this distinction, though perhaps I am mis-seeing what you're showing). It's not that your film would not be lessened by absence of words, of course it would, but it would be lessened less than Godard's piece would be, as there is a consistent visual 'aspect' - I won't use 'narrative' - which the Godard film entirely lacks. I hope that's a little clearer, though now I'll re-watch your film another few times (which will bring the total to the half-century mark, and watch the Godard again, with sound on and with sound turned off).
ReplyDeleteThe key point, I guess, is that your film, even with the spoken word taken out, is at least pointing to the nature of text, whereas Godard's is not, unless I completely failed to gain anything from the visual aspects of both. Hope that clarifies at least in part?
What can I have written to make you think I don't like emotional work!! Quite the contrary!
ReplyDeletex
Interesting movie, a few shots are stunningly beautiful, I like the concept, the narrative, its sweet simplicity ("never telling anybody ab my secret longing, not even myself..."), the choice of music complements the text and image wonderfully, but the voice-its pitch, its tone-, although a lovely voice, did not quite send to adulthood, deep longings and endless waitings. To me, it's the voice of a nymphet seizing-with a sizzle!-the frigid surroundings, less so the voice of a woman in waiting. I may be wrong, though, so very wrong...Nice work, so, please, don't take it as criticism...it's simply something that curiously stood out.(Please feel free to edit or not publish my comment, as I really don't intend it for public consumption:).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx37fO25k-4
ReplyDeletethis seems better, Godard's film.
hi my beautiful friend, I actually viewed this major art video a couple of more times and that will probably not be enough.
ReplyDeleteyour voice in tone and pitch transports the quiet beauty of your soul that I have so many times admired here.waiting is not a manmade task as the film pointed out we must go beyond words and -snow is always last year's snow- and black tubes feeding me with the past- and you say-Im searching for something but what- yes the quiet beauty of reaching out to the future in a natural way extending yourself beyond the past to the future, going beyond the first stroke of the alphabetas the film pointed to.
the tone and pitch of your beautiful melodious voice is drawing us to the purity of the wait as you say the purity will become your life.yes we are drawn to the edge of the present to the predawn of the future slowly peacefully with a universal beautiful voice like an OM.
The snow has never left the ground here but we had quite a snowfall last night and as I am walking through it a little later my beautiful friend your voice will walk with me in quiet meditation..
ffflaneur, spring and autumn do seem more directly and unilaterally connected to either youth or decline, isn't it? so no, they wouldn't have been an option, i think.
ReplyDeletedear James,
ReplyDelete"I wonder if I will pass him later,
weeping in the parking lot,
staring at the sky,
tears glittering in the sun.
You would look away,
but I want to know everything."
you remember, don't you? i think it is out of the same feeling, the same longing and rupture that my film is born (but perhaps, in different ways, every work of art, or attempt at one? (at least in the case of what we would call (high) modernist sensitivity, which we both share).
i wouldn't know what else to say, if not about the weeping of gratitude, of wonder that everything can be as it is...
haha, Rachel - i am sorry (but actually i am of course glad that my expectation was proven mistaken). i only assumed that taking your own style into consideration, which is more detached, as-a-matter-of-fact-ish, than my more emotional perspective on the Bridge.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine, thank you so much, again and again, for your warm and dedicated presence on the Bridge - and i am glad my voice accompanied you in meditative snow walks :-)
ReplyDeletebisou!
anonymous, hello again and thank you for watching and sharing your opinion.
ReplyDeletei don't have a problem with publishing any comment i get, i have repeated this on the bridge, i value well-argumented and civilized critique.
it would seem that finally somebody thinks as i did, that my narrating voice almost ruined the video! :-) though we are in a very drastic minority here, it would seem! of course everybody has her or his own expectations about how a voice should sound in a film, or a face should look like etc., one has to simply accept this plurality of opinions, when one makes a film public.
it is not like i had many choices anyway, of course there is the technical problem of not having any actors working for me, but also i have to point out that the authenticity issue is important to me, i intend these films only as self-investigation and self-expression tools, and this one being so personal, i think my voice should be there, and not somebody else's.
i have a problem with your comment, though, in the moment when your views seem to support a highly gendered, if not sexualized (nymphet, frigid, woman in waiting etc.) interpretation of the film: i don't think that there is any element in it which suggests that this is only a feminine perspective, and not a generally human one, transcending any gender separation. of course there is a feminine sensitivity underlying it, because it is a woman expressing herself, but this doesn't limit this expression to conveying only a feminine perspective (not that there would be anything wrong with that, it is just that such is not the case here).
of course, i remember ... i could never forget such a gift as your attention to this little poem :-)
ReplyDeletei am left in silent amazement that things can happen as they do happen ....
Impact de ta voix Roxana si fragile que l’on retrouve dans la bande son. Voix off qui rythme ces visages fait mentir l‘image ou la révèle autrement. En tâchant de restituer ton regard sur le monde, tu offre une vision proprement phénoménologique de cette vision de l'attente; l’être-au-monde dans son immédiateté vécue.
ReplyDeleteOr il faut revenir au sol, faire retour aux choses mêmes, et pour décrire les phénomènes, il faut s’interroger sur la conscience comme manière a priori de se rapporter à des objets, on ne sort jamais de la conscience. Bien sur celle-ci c’est aérée, claire comme un grand vent, une manifestation poétique; Ce morceau que j’ai entendu toute ma vie ! Toute cette tendresse ! .
well Roxana thankyou, it is only a natural truthful response to want to return the warmth and beauty of your comments and the endless beauty of your posts on the bridge....
ReplyDelete(and wow no more codes to sign in haha. well for now anyway.
HUGS
Dear Roxana
ReplyDeleteI am not a "drastic" art pontificator, I am an avid art consumer. I respond, I don't critique. I like or I don't care; there's no in-between, it's the audience defining privilege, to partake if it's savory or ignore if it's not. I'm sorry you saw in my response what was clearly not there.
dear anonymous,
ReplyDeletei am glad if i misinterpreted some aspects of your comment, as you say. but no, i haven't at all understood your comment as a 'critique', and i think i expressed a similar opinion as you here, that it is 'the audience's privilege', definitely subjective privilege, to like or not to like an author's choices, or the entire work! and i have never called you a 'drastic' critic, not at all, i said that we, you and me, are a 'drastic minority' here when it comes to disliking my voice, meaning: extreme minority, if this is not a common english-usage, i am sorry for the misunderstanding.
thank you for returning and sharing your thoughts with me!