THE RED SEA

by Michael MAZIÈRE
1992 / 16mm / color / sound / 1S / 20' 00

“Now I drift through the poem of the sea;
this gruel of stars mirrored the milky sky,
Devours green azures; ecstatic flotsam,
Drowned men, pale and thoughtful, sometimes drift by.

Staining the sudden blueness, the slow sounds,
Deliriums that streak the glowing sky,
Stronger than drink and the songs we sing,
It is boiling, bitter, red; It is love!”

‘The Drunken Boat’, Arthur Rimbaud.

THE RED SEA is a journey through land, sea and the body - across territories of sensuality, pain and memory. This quest is a tragic journey of self discovery, where disturbing images and the striking soundtrack are a testament to intense emotional territories which often remain unspoken or censored. THE RED SEA is the bearer of lost images - beauty and horror reel past in a disturbing celebration, a ghost dance set in the depths of an imaginary world.

“It looks to me to be an exquisite and delicate piece of film-making....congratulations on a marvellous piece.”
– Rod Stoneman

“The dancing sun in the evening sky merges with blood-red filtered close ups of water , as light quivers on the surface like strange writing. The slow motion camera of frozen images is reminiscent of Hollywood with its sumptuous melodramas, yet evokes smouldering conflicts and transforms fragments of hands, a note book, the sea, a sunken ship, into dark secrets. An exquisite elegy.”
– Stefan Grisseman, Die Presse

“THE RED SEA is a brooding journey through a labyrinth of superimposition, memory-pocked landscapes and the quixotic nature of subjective imagery. In many respects it is an archaic film, a return to the lyricism of a certain stream of the 60s avant-garde best illustrated by the work of Bruce Baillie (retrospective, Cinémathèque, 1995). Flouting its influences openly the film begins with a passionate, melancholy and elliptical stanza from Rimbaud's 'The Drunken Boat'. The images which follow shimmer and blur, walls of buildings seen from a car window, the sun burning like the fluctuating jet of a gas flame on the horizon, a painter's palette signposting the film's visual debt to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. As the film progresses we are drawn closer to the sea, a key metaphorical site for the unconscious, and it submerges itself in the murky depths of subjectivity. The shaky camera, the moody soundscape, the layering and step-printing of images contribute to the anthropomorphic quality of the filmic experience.
These images, which approximate a fluctuating sense of subjectivity, are something like those perhaps glimpsed in the last moments before drowning. This is a tentative, beautiful and endlessly perplexing vision of a cinematic landscape infected by a haunting sense of place and memory.”
– Adrian Danks, Senses of Cinema

2 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format 16mm
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound magnetic sound
rental fee 83,00 €

distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound sound
rental fee 83,00 €