Women Minor Speculations
Synopsis
Taking as its starting point the Neolithic figurines found throughout the Danube region from Croatia to the Black Sea through Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia,Bulgaria and Greece Women Minor Speculationsis part road trip, part time travel and part speculative fiction using fragments of time, archaeological fragments, sound fragments and imaginary audio files trying to weave a potential whole from many distinct parts. During a period of five years I collected materials in film, images, sounds, and text dealing with remains as evidential material, with landscapes as witnesses, with interwoven biographies of archaeologists, their objects and subjects of research (the figurines, the constellations, cement, gossip and songs) in an exploration of how real and unreal objects of material culture produce gendered
interpretations, collisions and hallucinations of public accounts, using technologies of memory, data storage devices to fracture the official historical narrative through minor histories, minor narratives and minor speculations. Shot over a five year period on 35mm,
16mm, digital Bolex, Digital 8, mobile phones and still cameras the film involves a tentative encounter of two female explorers in south eastern Europe meeting through materials and separated by 6000 years.
Entry Category: | Experimental |
Work length: | 00:59:00 |
Country of Origin: | Croatia |
Artist Profile
Official Trailer
Director's Statement
Women Minor Speculations is shot on 35mm, 16mm, digital Bolex, Digital 8, mobile phones and still cameras with each medium carrying with it its own texture, its own discourse and levels of grain and tactility. In my attempt to rewrite a historical narrative I manipulate with the levels of authority of an image, trying to inscribe into each frame or sequence the possibility of another one, thinking about forms of representing the minor subject in history, in images and in collective memory in a particular geopolitical location and within a particular time frame. The film is accompanied by an original electronic soundtrack by the cinematographer Ivan Slipčević sourced through field recordings and processed, and fragments of a speculative fiction collated from the archaeological record, from notations of everyday life in the locations we filmed in or the archaeological digs we took part in and poetic fragments.
Credits
Writer and Director: Nicole Hewitt
Director of Photography: Ivan Slipčević
Sound: Ivan Slipčević
Editor: Hrvoslava Brkušić
Mix: Hrvoje Nikšić
Assistance: Vida Guzmić