An enigmatic glimpse of life through precarious vignettes, propelling a narrative through a nebulous and opaque structure that sutures the filmmaker’s home movie footage to archival material—from Hollywood narrative films to political selfie videos. A handmade impression of time suspended between past and present and the ghosts and places occupying it, contemplating the nature and meaning of vision, memory and image making.
Country
USA, IranYear
2024Length
20'28"
Category
SperimentaleCinematography
Mahda PurmehdiEditing
Mahda PurmehdiSound
Mahda PurmehdiSynopsis
Biography
Mahda Purmehdi is an experimental filmmaker and educator. He works across the mediums of 16mm, Super 8 and digital video, often integrating original images, words, and sounds with reconfigured literary and audio-visual material. At the heart of his filmmaking practice are questions of modes of film production and the political implications of image-making. His films are characterized as visually tactile and handmade evocations, colliding archive and memory, visible and invisible, the living and ghosts, history (especially film history) and the forgotten. He received his BFA in Film from Tehran University of Art in 2019 and is currently pursuing his MFA in Film at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Archival materials
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
A Touch of Grace: Portrait of John Berger (1996)
FFT3918 Attempts Landing at KISP with Zero Visibility and Closed Tower (liveatc.net)
Footage of Mohammad Moradi’s Suicide Message
Footage of Self-Immolation of Aaron Bushnell
Aeolian wind harp sounding in Elqui Valley of Chile (Felix Blume)
