2004, 16mm, col, sound, 17min
Ritualised through performance to camera, Stages of Mourning is Pucill’s journey of bereavement. In as much as this is a meditation on coming to terms with loss, the film is an exploration of how our relationship with the dead is made different through film. The artist orders image fragments of her late lover and collaborator, Sandra Lahire. By trying to physically immerse herself into photographs and film footage or by restaging these, Pucill forms a continuous stream of a life of two lovers. Through this doubling and layering, illusions accumulate as if these were a product of a machine that didn’t stop.
Black Maria Film Festival – Director’s Citation – 2007
- Directed and produced:
- Sarah Pucill
- Funded:
- Arts and Humanities Research Council
- Performers:
- Sarah Pucill, Sandra Lahire
- Camera, Edit & Sound:
- Sarah Pucill
- Camera Assistance:
- Chloe Stewart, Tanya Syed
- 2004
- Rencentres Internationales Paris/Berlin (touring)
- Feminale, Cologne
- Kassel Documentary Film Festival
- College Art Association (CAA) Art History Conference, Atlanta
- Masquarade curated by Kate Newton, Photofusion Gallery, London
- 2005
- Experiments in Moving image’ curated by Jackie Hatfield & Steve Littman, the Old Lumiere
- Cinema, London
- London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
- Wake London Gallery West (with Peggy Atherton)
- Take 291, curated by Charlie Phillips, 291 Gallery
- 2006
- PULSAR Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, France and touring
- Light Reading’ Series, NO.W.HERE Lab, London curated by K MIrza + B Butler (retrospective)
- Greenwich Picture House, London (retrospective)
- 2007
- The Millennium Film Workshop (retrospective)
- 2008
- Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon
- The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (retrospective)
- Chisenhale Dance Space and Queen Mary University Symposium on Mourning
- Interrogating Trauma Conference, Perth, Australia
- 2009
- The Experimental Film Club, Dublin curated by Donal Foreman.
- 2010
- The ‘Other’, Rencentre de Sophie, Nantes, France.
- 2011
- Moving Image South, Curzon Cinema (retrospective) curated Laura Kloss
- 2012
- Open City Docs, ICA, Aesthetic Queeries, curated by Treasa O’Brien
- Conference ‘Family Ties’, University of London, Presentation ‘Re-enactment as cathartic Ritual in Stages Of Mourning with a screening of the film.
- ‘Autobiography and the Archive at Whitechapel Gallery, screening of Stages Of Mourning with Q+A with Miranda Pennell, organised and chaired by Elisa Adami and Alessandra Ferrini (Mnemoscape).
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- 2014
- Whitechapel Gallery, The Archive and Autobiography, curated by Alessandra Ferrini
- 2011
- ‘Sarah Pucill: A cinema of attraction’ by Sebastien Ronceray (or see scan of original French article)
- 2011
- ‘Those Deep Approaches’ by Cherry Smyth for the Lux DVD Booklet
- 2010
- The Theatre of female point of view, Gloria Morano, La Furia Umana
- 2005
- ‘Accumulation in Stages of Mourning’, Lux-on-line, by Naomi Salaman
- 2006
- ‘Stop Frame Motion in Stages of Mourning’ Lux-on line by Vicky Smith
- 2006
- The ‘autoethnographic’ in Chantal Akerman’s News From Home, and an Analysis of Almost Out and Stages of Mourning