Two names of women
and 64 names read by a woman is nice work.
The first piece
"rachel" is composed of all the words that the android rachel speaks
in the movie "Blade Runner".
A few years ago,
I did this little super 8 piece where I only recorded the dialogues
of the only woman that appeared in the first Japanese animation
I saw. My reason to do it among others was to make a short movie
highlighting her part, otherwise marginalized by the male hero.
Women also can kick ass, or something like that, was my point. This
may have nothing to do with Xavier's piece, but there must be a
reason to isolate rachel's voice.
By choosing one
single character in a movie, you would be able to see the progression
of the film in a concise, yet abstracted manner. Why
chose rachel? I don't know much about Blade Runner, and I think
I would like to, but the first time I went to see the film I fell
asleep.
Choosing the dialogues
of one single person creates an open and intimate relationship to
the narration. It opens new holes in the film because it doesn't
follow all the events, it doesn't show you everything: you have
to imagine what is going on. Dialogue becomes monologue as you see
all the events through the eyes of one person. It gives you the
same reality seen in a different way.
Editing movies
could also be a form of protest against the original. Take the example
of the guy who edited the Jawjaw Binks character out of the new
Star Wars film and put it online: he was protesting because he found
this character stupid, and even racist, like many of us did. The
protest inherent in my Super 8 film became clear when a marginalized
character was replaced in the forefront. Perhaps Xavier did the
same thing?
In the second piece
of the disc, "lydia", he did some editing of what seems to be an
Italian movie. He left only the parts when a character spoke another
characters' name.
Through the inflection
of how each name is spoken, we can feel the emotions that are carried
thought the movie. First you hear the open, watery eyes of the man
in love, when he calls his beloved "Lydia!", and we can
feel the red eyes and the veins of the same face when he calls the
Lydia that has hurt him. You can feel the presence of love and the
absence of love, just through how each word is spoken.
The succession
of events in the film come through by how they call each other's
names: first they were happy, then they got mad, then there was
danger, then there was an awful event, then they made peace... or
something like that. My mom once said that she recognized her mother's
mood by the way she called her from the balcony. Xavier's editing
calls attention to the drama of simply calling someone's name.
And the third piece
is made out of excerpts from a text read by a woman,
keeping only the objects she named.
64 objects, that
is.
It is like a connect
the dots picture.
more information
about this work (follow the links to catalogue Xavier Gautier):