PROLOGUE
12 min. in English
written, produced, directed, camera, editing by Caterina Borelli, © 1995
Best Experimental Video Award for “Prologue”, Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh 1996
Best Experimental Video Award for “Prologue”, Festival Internacional de Video, Buenos Aires 1996
SYNOPSIS
Prologue is a video that explores the connections between writing and filmmaking. Specifically, this work refers to the way in which a prologue shapes understandings of the text that follows it. As the first in a series of three works that experiment with the connections and differences between literary works and works which employ moving images, this tape is a prologue. In itself, it sets a pace and has a rhythm that borrows from dreams, memories and the emergence of things felt.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
“Two or three years ago I started reflecting about what I was doing in relation to making personal work, experimental work, but also working with media in general. First, I made the “Prologue” tape, the tease, which is really the statement of what is interesting for me in moving images: that is their similarity in structure with writing — and mostly the similarity of experimental work with poetry in its structure. And probably it is the basis of how I look at images. And from that day I started making notes, and started working as if I were working on a book. I did the “Prologue”, the introduction, then “Page a: learning to watch” and “Page 99” . “Page 1” is the beginning of the book, and “Page 99″ is the last page. I did the beginning and the end.” Excerpt from: “Interview with Caterina Borelli” by Kathy High, curator of the WNET TV series “ Reel New York”, New York City, 1997.
PAGE 1: learning to watch
3 min. 24 sec.
PAGE 99
54 sec.
Written, produced, directed, camera, editing by Caterina Borelli, © 1997
SYNOPSIS
These two videos address the need for a reconsideration of the way we watch. “Page 1: learning to watch” pleads for a reversal of the equation “the more, the better” and expresses a need for distance from images. “Page 99” considers images as unfinished products that require completion by audience participation. They are a sequel to the artist’s previous work “Prologue” (1995).
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
There are two things that are really evident for me in relationship to images: one is the audience and the other is the maker. And in “Page 1: learning to watch”, as the audience — and I see myself as part of the audience also — we have a relationship to images, which is a gluttonous relationship, where more is better. You know, we just watch as much as we can. We watch everything. I think the process should be much more selective. We really have a pollution of images. We should really be more selective, and choose to look at something, or choose not to look at something.
“Page 1: learning to watch” is like a relationship with food — it’s really about ingesting. “Page 99” is at the end of everything, and about whatever I can make as a maker, or whatever I’m looking at in other people’s work. I think that it’s very important in relation to the audience that the work is open, so as to allow the audience to interact with it. Then they close the work with their participation. In the end, you, as the audience, decide what the image you are looking at is about. Excerpts from: “Interview with Caterina Borelli” by Kathy High, curator of the WNET TV series “ Reel New York”, New York City, 1997