Women CineMakers, Special Edition

Women Cinemakers festival in China, a remembrance of ancestors. Moths are universally recognised as symbols of death, though through the month of April Chinese custom ordains that moths should not be disturbed or killed, as they are believed to represent souls of family and lovers once lost. This ‘remembering’ I explored with shifting focus and the slowed, woozy pace of the camera’s exploration of the ‘Moth Theatre’. The structure was always intended to be fluid especially as the practicalities of the shoot left a lot to circumstance. My original hope was that the majority of the moths would fly by the evening. However on delivery I realised that a vast proportion of them had died in transport. This was really upsetting and changed the nature of the film, it developed an unsettling atmosphere and became more explicitly about death. I really wanted to leave space for peoples’ imagination, almost in the same way that the holes or gaps in the painting let in the surrounding landscape. Holes and splits in painting and film have acted like ‘Mandorlas’ in Renaissance painting, though rather than opening up to the heavens, they turn the videos inside out: exposing an imperfect mirror.

The well-orchestrated tapestry of dreamlike images and minimal ambient sound, provides ‘Ilkla Mooar’ with such a poetic quality: how did