UID:
kobvindex_ZLB15729916
Format:
22 Min.
Content:
Ulysse is Agnès Varda's film-essay, from 1982, on a photograph she took in 1954, of a man and a young boy, both naked, on a beach with the body of a dead goat. From this single image, arranged and composed by Varda with the two models after she was struck by seeing the goat's corpse on the beach, she spins an interrogation of memory, image-making, and the meaning(s) of art. The film represents Varda's grappling with this single image, forming various interpretations and angles of approach at the picture, experimenting in order to discover what might be thought and said about this photo from her own past. She begins this process of discovery by visiting with each of the photo's subjects thirty years later, in a series of playful interviews that don't really shed any light on the image other than to emphasize the vagaries of memory. The man from the photo, an Egyptian who Varda lost touch with shortly after it was taken, is now a magazine editor, and Varda films him in his office. Hilariously, she has him strip for her camera yet again, interviewing him in the nude, with a pile of books strategically positioned across his hips. He barely remembers the day the photo was taken, providing her with only sketchy memories. This is more than the boy from the photo, Ulysses, can remember, since he says the day is a total blank for him, and that consequently seeing the boy on the beach is not like seeing himself at all. The relationship between photos, memory, and the conception of identity is one of this film's key themes, as Varda interrogates the relationship that what we see in an image ̶ even one we don't remember being taken ̶ has to who we are, or were at the time. (Only the Cinema)
Note:
Orig.: Frankreich, 1982
In:
Tout(e) Varda : [DVD-Video] - Varda tous courts, 2012, (2012)
Keywords:
Fotografie
;
Erinnerung
;
DVD-Video
;
DVD-Video
Author information:
Varda, Agnès
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