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CinemaPRO -
Sunday, December 14, 2014 - 16:00
Written by:
Alex Gâlmeanu
Cast:
Ana Ularu
Cinematography:
Alex Gâlmeanu
Editing:
Alex Gâlmeanu
Sound:
Alex Gâlmeanu
Producer:
Alex Gâlmeanu
World premiere
Inspired by Susan Sontag’s dictum (“time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art”), ON PHOTOGRAPHY is a deceptively playful musing on cinema. Divided along a 3x3 split-screen, the film assembles Ana Ularu’s syncopated and disordered iterations of Sontag’s maxim, with each repeated utterance bringing in semantic alignment the haphazard vocal montage. Visual artist Alex Gâlmeanu’s semiotic puzzle thus compels the viewer to re-assemble the jumbled message while simultaneously playing catch-up within the split-screen montage. Conceptually astute, the film is a fitting homage to time, the value it imparts to objects and to the spectator as their mediator. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)
Director:
ALEX GÂLMEANU (b. 29th October, 1978) is a photographer and videographer based in Bucharest, Romania. A graduate of The National University of Arts (Bucharest) he has worked as a professional photographer since 1998, focusing on editorial, advertising and experimental photography as well as portrait, fashion and other categories related to human personalities. Published in all Romanian glossy magazines, he’s made advertising campaigns for local, national and international coverage. His work has been exhibited in Bucharest, Paris, Toulouse, Nantes, Rejkyavik (Iceland) and Cork (Ireland).
Website:
Contact:
alex[at]galmeanu[dot]com
Director's statement:
The film, like the fragment it's based on, is a discourse about time and its influence on the importance we attach to objects. Time - and its passing - is one of the key contextual variables of valuing the things that surround us. Almost everything tends to become valuable if it stands the test of time, if it survives long enough. Objects, probably insignificant at the time of their creation, are fascinating today and will be even more fascinating in the future, while the only factor, the only added ingredient is time. Sometimes it takes centuries or millennia, sometimes hundreds of years or decades; there are cases in which a few years are enough, or maybe months or weeks - there is no formula to apply - we do not know how long it takes to ensure value, perhaps it might be a matter of a few minutes. In this regard, the actress Ana Ularu utters her words on nine different occasions, in individual sequences recorded at different times. The text acquires meaning only when these sequences are played back simultaneously, through their underlying editing structure. It is a visual experiment where the ingredient called time is introduced deliberately, during a speech that is essentially talking about time. (Alex Gâlmeanu)
The film, like the fragment it's based on, is a discourse about time and its influence on the importance we attach to objects. Time - and its passing - is one of the key contextual variables of valuing the things that surround us. Almost everything tends to become valuable if it stands the test of time, if it survives long enough. Objects, probably insignificant at the time of their creation, are fascinating today and will be even more fascinating in the future, while the only factor, the only added ingredient is time. Sometimes it takes centuries or millennia, sometimes hundreds of years or decades; there are cases in which a few years are enough, or maybe months or weeks - there is no formula to apply - we do not know how long it takes to ensure value, perhaps it might be a matter of a few minutes. In this regard, the actress Ana Ularu utters her words on nine different occasions, in individual sequences recorded at different times. The text acquires meaning only when these sequences are played back simultaneously, through their underlying editing structure. It is a visual experiment where the ingredient called time is introduced deliberately, during a speech that is essentially talking about time. (Alex Gâlmeanu)