I watched Inside the Blind Iris, directed by Douglas Bernardt, with music by Torben Lars Sylvest and sound design by Pär Carlsson. It was an expressionistic dance film with a dreamlike pace to it. Momentum rose and fell with the gritty, subtext-rich visuals, the dancers’ rhythm increasing in emotional pitch and intensity. It reflects a sense of entrapment, a rebuke of the work/life status quo. One of my favourite moments were the offbeat freeze frames of the frenzied dancers’ faces starting at 5:09. I did not love the written text that would appear throughout, I felt that was the film tipping its hand a little too much, entering the sophomoric. The sound, shoes squeaking on the floor and factory ambience created an intriguing sense of playfulness with the grave monochromatic imagery. Significantly, during some of the colour portions of the film, sampled score from a much older film plays, tonally reminiscent of cinema from the 1940s to the 1950s. This sense of romance and drama complements the themes of escape the film suggests.
Yellow from 2023, directed by Elham Ehsas, was an extremely different experience. A short film concerning the oppressive regime and Sharia doctrine in Kabul, Afghanistan following the 2021 NATO and US withdrawal of troops and subsequent seize of power by the Taliban. The beautifully framed vignette of a woman purchasing her Hijab speaks volumes with very little, reflecting the wider patriarchal crackdown on women’s rights through a small, yet resoundingly significant moment. We move from the aural, documentarian chaos of crowd voices and birdsong into a more composed ‘scene’ inside a clothier. The quiet throughout the film from this point onwards is striking. I found this film profoundly depressing, the relative silence of its soundscape heightened its impact. The principle characters’ hushed voices among the deadening fabrics betraying not just the intimate, but the intimation of wider sociological subtext of oppression and loss of freedom. Dynamically, the film dances on the boundary between intimacy and claustrophobia, the smothered voice and hidden face, the unspoken loss sealed away. I noticed the role of diegetic music and language as signifiers of freedom, the seller’s music and repetition of English words acting as motifs for independence, presented almost as final expressions of freedom and personal choice before re-entering the outside world.
References:
Inside the Blind Iris (2023) Directed by Douglas Bernardt. [Short film] United Kingdom: Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage.
Yellow (2023) Directed by Elham Ehsas. [Short film] United Kingdom: Azana Films.