"Incantations"
A film by Olivier Fouchard, 2002-2019
starring Mahine Rouhi and Anne Castillo.
(work in progress).
Super8, 16mm and digital video, B&W, 8 minutes :
https://old.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche.php?film=312
Long ago, perhaps long ago, it was said that a grandmother snatched a baby from its mother's arms, reproaching her for not taking good care of it.
Then they would argue over the child's body, which cried, being shaken and scratched, torn...
In this short film, we clearly see two female characters played by non-professional actresses Anne Castillo and Mahine Rouhi, and it's hard to tell who's playing what role, and if this is indeed the story we're talking about...
So, knowing all this, a question arises: Where did the baby go?
It may well be that the grown-up baby is the director of this film, using these characters not to tell another story but to express his emotions and traumas with a certain violence: it's a film of psychoanalytic self-analysis, a kind of "art therapy" that provides some relief but cures nothing.
Two bodies, or rather, two women, searching for each other in the darkness. Sometimes illuminating each other, sometimes playing hide-and-seek in the gloom. At once fireflies and butterflies, they begin surprising nocturnal choreographies, of which only a few fragments remain here.
Their bodies eventually come together, groping, hesitantly, sometimes backward, for the duration of a spirited and restrained dance.
Yes, they danced that night, but did they really meet ?
The real film has yet to be made...?
/ OF 2019
(File: Incantations Noir Grande Pièce 31 03 2019)
(Data from the original film used again as rushes: *Flamenc'co" / France / 2003 / 7' / 4:3 with Mahine Rouhi and Anne Castillo. : https://old.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche.php?film=312
This is a mockup for applications for residencies and financial contributions to post-production.
The images are of a particular quality, first filmed in Super 8, then printed and manipulated on 16mm film using a homemade optical printer, and finally screened with a passable quality telecine camera, then generations rendering the poor quality of the images like a buried and slightly blurry memory, and finally more or less reframed and reworked on the original I-movie amateur clip software.
The original edit in 16mm from 2002 bears the title "Flamen'co" * served as "rushes" images for this sketch or model film edited in 2019.
Incantations 2019 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAXrQQq_fjs
https://youtu.be/zAXrQQq_fjs?si=icR4n6X-SfHaxuZf
