One Too Many. Courtesy of FIDMarseille International Film Festival.

Screening
The Confessions of Roee Rosen / One, Two, Many

The Confessions of Roee Rosen 
Israel. Dir. Roee Rosen. 2008, 60 mins. Digital projection. Autobiography assumes a pact with the person it is addressed to, a contract of confidence that paradoxically authorizes the person confessing to hiding behind his revelations, and to wear, eventually, all sorts of masks. That is the chosen strategy here; three women in succession addressing the camera substitute the male subject expected on the screen. These women are immigrant workers in Israel, each coming from different countries, with a poor understanding of Hebrew that they decipher with difficulty with an autocue machine. Suddenly the restricted frame of the confessional explodes: what their words, their minimal choreographies reveal goes beyond privacy and its pathetic little secrets. This maladroit trio exposes itself in the place of artist Roee Rosen, who uses ventriloquism to voice fantasies too immense not to be shared.

Preceded by:
One, Two, Many
Belgium. Dir. Manon de Boer. 2012, 22 mins. Digital projection. Her previous films (Sylvia Krystel-Paris (FID 2004) and Le temps qu’il reste (FID 2008) explored the spaces of music and speech in cinema, between picture and sound, seeing and listening. With One, Two, Many, she plays with political and aesthetic variations and issues, this time by tying together three gestures which eventually merge into a single one giving pride of place to the body. One: A strong blow from deep inside flutist Michael Schmid as he plays a piece by Istva’n Matus. Breath turns into a note. Two: The film opens up to multiplicity, as suggested by an off-screen discussion about a text by Roland Barthes on togetherness. Many: Clearly carried out in the finale, this community of “numbers” becomes a flowing wandering among the listeners and performers of Tre canti popolari by Giacinto Scelsi, a piece that is all piercing sounds and onomatopoeias. The film delivers a lesson in politics, parting or bringing together bodies and sounds.

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