Even Gray Feels Blue
No one speaks;
Nothing to say;
Nothing to teach.
Silence is truly the best speech!
- Ahmad Shamlou
“Even Gray Feels Blue” investigates the nature of melancholia and solitude, translating these most intimate and deeply personal memories of these feelings into their aesthetic essences. The echoes of the individual move into collective realities. Sorrow becomes social malaise.
The film avoids the structure of story and narrative, built instead as a musical composition, creating an ambiguous psychic space for the viewer to enter. The images have been created in conversation with a composition by the Iranian master Oud player Negar Bouban, based on “Shabaneh,” a poem by Ahmad Shamlou, arguably the most influential contemporary Iranian poet. Both music and image utilize repetition to create a trance-like dynamic, intensifying the emotional resonance of tapping in to memories as individual history and the act of collective remembrance.
“Even Gray Feels Blue” is a natural evolution of my sculptural and performance practices into film. The painstaking process of stop motion animation is particularly suited to this topic, as the frame is intimately shaped as much by my emotional state as it is technique and planning. The film is part of an ongoing series of films dealing with the intersection of the individual body and emotion with broader socio-emotional realities.
Nothing to say;
Nothing to teach.
Silence is truly the best speech!
- Ahmad Shamlou
“Even Gray Feels Blue” investigates the nature of melancholia and solitude, translating these most intimate and deeply personal memories of these feelings into their aesthetic essences. The echoes of the individual move into collective realities. Sorrow becomes social malaise.
The film avoids the structure of story and narrative, built instead as a musical composition, creating an ambiguous psychic space for the viewer to enter. The images have been created in conversation with a composition by the Iranian master Oud player Negar Bouban, based on “Shabaneh,” a poem by Ahmad Shamlou, arguably the most influential contemporary Iranian poet. Both music and image utilize repetition to create a trance-like dynamic, intensifying the emotional resonance of tapping in to memories as individual history and the act of collective remembrance.
“Even Gray Feels Blue” is a natural evolution of my sculptural and performance practices into film. The painstaking process of stop motion animation is particularly suited to this topic, as the frame is intimately shaped as much by my emotional state as it is technique and planning. The film is part of an ongoing series of films dealing with the intersection of the individual body and emotion with broader socio-emotional realities.
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