Double Exposure 2023

Above: The filmmaker Sandra Lahire from 1999; film still from ‘Double Exposure’ (2023)

b/w+Col (DCP) sound 28min
PREMIERE:    Experimental Film Festival Frankfurt
Best Experimental Film, Toronto Women Film Festival, March 2024.
9. September 2023

Double Exposure re-stages photographs of Pucill and her once partner Sandra Lahire, shortly before Sandra’s death from anorexia in 2001.   These black and white photographic images are projected onto an interior wall, where the filmmaker steps inside.  Alone with the camera, the filmmaker blindly positions herself into a place that she cannot see, to re-play the image, to meet herself then and Sandra, who both keep getting younger.  ‘Double Exposure’ is a space created between two time-frames, between two women and between material and light as odd objects from the projections are placed in position with their ‘light projection’ double eg a dress, shoe, mirror, table, chair etc.  Inside this imagined intimacy that is also empty, the silence in the room is interrupted with street sounds from the world outside.  The monochrome static camera and slow-paced performance of unbroken time that constitutes the body of the film, is bookended with colour 16mm film of a sunny beach, where colour emulsion bleeds between the sea, sky and sun and Sandra dances spontaneously whilst chatting and joking with the filmmaker who is present at that time, soon after, and 21 years after the death.  Sandra’s piano playing ‘Prelude in E minor’ by Chopin accompanies her spinning dance and puppet performance on the beach.  Lines from a text Sandra was writing at the time the photographs were made, are read over the images by the filmmaker that include quotations from the painter Georgio de Chirico and poet Sylvia Plath, reflecting on enigma, love, camera memory and a body that cannot be heard.

Director, camera, sound:
Sarah Pucill
Appearing:
Sandra Lahire (on beach) (1950-2001), Sarah Pucill in her studio
Voice-over:
Sarah Pucill
Text:
Quotes taken from Sandra Lahire’s incomplete PhD draft
Photographs:
Sarah Pucill (copyright) in collaboration with Sandra Lahire
Piano:
Sandra Lahire on London Filmmakers Co-Op piano (Chopin Prelude in E minor, Op 28 No 4)
Colour grading and image correction:
Fraser Watson
Sound Mix:
Robbie McKane

Forthcoming feature article by Ciaran Hervas on ‘Double Exposure’  and its contexts in relation to Pucills other films to be published in MIRAJ Magazine (Moving Image Review Arts Journal), London,  April 2025.

Post Screening Discussion link recorded 31 May  2024 at Danielle Arnaud Gallery: 

 

Frankfurt Experimental Film Festival Premiere 9 Sept 2023

Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Discussion with Helena Reckitt + Filmmaker. May 31st 2024

Toronto International Women Film Festival: Best Experimental Film 2024

Experimental Brasil 2024: Official Selection

Experimental Forum Los Angeles 2024: Special Mention

Buenos Aries Independent Film Festival 2024: Official Selection

Screener Short Films 2023:  Honourable Mention

Montreal Women Film Festival: 2023: Nominee

Montreal Independent Film Festival: Selected

Chicago Women Film Festival: Selected

 

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