Allegra

After rewatching parts of the film Ashes and Diamonds I had a lot of ideas about space and movement in space and film but not a clear idea of how I would turn any of my ideas into a project. At first I had thought about creating a drawing but in class last week I started to play around with something time-based.

During most of Ashes and Diamonds Maciek is waiting in a bar and in one scene he slides a few shot glasses down the bar towards his companion. The moment is entertaining but also very tense and slightly violent. Using this as a starting point I filmed jars of food slide across a table in the school kitchen. When I showed the film to Julia she immediately responded to the undertones of domestic tension and violence. In fact, this was a subject I had been thinking about a lot recently as I live with a host family here and although my family is great, their very traditional domestic roles often make me uncomfortable. Relationships between men and women and between families is something that is touched on in Ashes and Diamonds as well--especially when families are broken apart. From here I started to work on a video project that primarly focuses on my feelings of discomfort around more traditional gender roles. The video is not quite finished but I had linked a few still images. I would also like to thank Jonathan for his help with the filming.