‘Apocrypha’ (Zvyagintsev) – watching short film
How can you watch film together with others for the nourishing of the soul, heart and mind? How can you watch perceptively and discern more complex and compiled aspects in the art of film?
Narrative film is a relatively accessible art form. You can access it at home. Cinema´s are for most people within close reach. It generally does not take more than two hours. There is multiple help through dialogue, visual image, sound and music in order to be drawn into the story, and to be touched through the different senses. This has made film into a so popular medium.
If there is limited time available, a good idea might be to use short film. In my opinion it is a better alternative than to show selected clips from a film. The maker of the film has compiled the whole film in such a way that his intended effect of the visual and narrative story telling is optimal. By using short film one pays respect to the intention of its maker.
A good suggestion might be the short film Apocrypha by the Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Zvyagintsev produces film at a high cinematic level. His breakthrough as a director came with The Return (2003), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival of that year. His film Leviathan about levels of corruption in the Russian society from 2014 was selected as the Academy Awards best foreign film. Apocrypha was made as a contribution to the omnibus film ”New York, I Love You” from 2008. His contribution was edited away as a ”too different element”, maybe too good to fit into the mediocre film that ”New York, I love you” became.
Apocrypha is a 13-minute film about the mortality of love against the skyline background of New York. At the same time it is a demonstration of how film works. We look through the lens of the camera at people and at their emotions and we have to weave a story together, which becomes a compilation of what moves within ourselves and of what the lens of the camera has caught. The power of short film is that it draws people into a story that has so many open endings and unfilled space that our active effort is very much needed to interpret what we are seeing.
Rinus
*Image used for non commercial purposes under 'fair use' of copyright material in recommendation of the film. Source az-film
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