The Zelensky Effect

The complicated nature of memory reflects our experiences in ways that are not always straightforward and clear. Through the recollections of ourselves and others, memory gets incorporated into the messiness of life. However, it is often in the interludes and the quiet moments that a type of truth emerges: that there will always be more unknowns than knowns. It is within the poetic expressions of life - the spaces, nuances and subtleties - that a clarity can emerge which is less explicit. Memories are perforated in the way they are forgotten, lost and recovered throughout our lives. The visual and metaphoric device of perforations serve as the general and guiding theme of my film. These perforations are the negative spaces and punctures in the film stock that take rolls of "still" negatives and allow the celluloid to be moved through the projector to make "moving pictures." They are the "precisely punched hole[s] at the edge of film used for film transport and location for exposure."1 These holes in the film stock, by being shown aesthetically on screen in my film, not only reference its physical, analogue nature, but also metaphorically refers to memory that has been lost and "recovered" through the use of Super 8 film taken contemporaneously. The aesthetics of the "exposed" film sprocket as well as the dust and dirt on the film and the light coming through the layers also reference memory. This is also expressed in the frailty and fallibility in the image shown on the film stock, which gets worn down and potentially damaged each time it is viewed. The frames above and below the "main" image in the centre of the frame reference the past and the future (a frame that is to come; a frame that was just shown) in addition to the "current" frame in view