Your debut work still/here, is a film which explores St. Louis. The film seems to engage both with the history of city as well as something which feels more personal. What drew you to this particular space?
Dora García is an internationally renowned Spanish artist and researcher whose work deals with the parameters and conventions of the presentation of art, questions of time – real or fictional – and the limits between representation and reality. She uses various supports to generate contexts in which the traditional system of communication – transmitter, message, recipient – is altered, thus modifying the traditional relationship between artist, work and public. In 2011 she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale.
In the 1977 film Riddles of the Sphinx, Laura Mulvey explains that the ‘Oedipus myth associates the voice of the Sphinx with motherhood as mystery and with resistance to patriarchy’. With a metaphoric connection in the Sphinx’s riddle and resistant motherhood, Mulvey and Wollen explore the film’s themes through everyday depictions played by actors. The scenes are bookended with an opening and close in which Mulvey speaks directly to the camera, suggesting the ultimate dilemma to with ‘motherhood and how to live it, or not to live it’.
For each of the filmmakers who have work at this years Essay Film Festival we are creating special profiles on our festival blog. The purpose of these profiles in to share a range of resources to benefit those interested in learning more about their work.