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DIRECTOR'S WORD E
The most significant source of inspiration for my film has been the French philosopher and social critic Jean Baudrillard's work Simulacra and simulation. In his book, Baudrillard introduces the idea of "The Desert of Reality". In his view, we are stuck in a hyper-realistic world with no more references; We live in a sea of signs that are not connected to any real thing. According to Baudrillard, the reality we once knew has
decayed, fallen to pieces in our current simulation world. It has become what the philosopher calls "the desert of reality". "It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.” Baudrillard's theory could also be adapted to the most burning
oxymoron of contemporary cinema; The more realistically a film tries to imitate reality, the more unrealistic and artificial the film becomes. Contemporary cinema strives for hyperrealism and therefore it’s fate is inevitably to simulate life, meaning and cinema itself. It is precisely this simulation that has made cinema lose a large part of its charm.
Before, one could watch a movie and then step out of the theatre into something one could call "reality". The world projected on the screen and the “reality” were clearly different from each other. Today, such a difference is no longer perceptible, but everything seems to be resting on the same surface, in the same stratification. The aesthetics of computer games, TV-serials, movies, advertisements, social media and
our living spaces are exactly the same; penetrating, illuminating, hyper-reality aesthetics, in the middle of which a person is placed as a product among other products. Mainstream films are lit, shot and edited in the style of video games. They look and feel like excessively long product presentations.
Arthouse films are no longer that much of an exception, as they too are gradually forced to fight for their space and existence in the same simulation, in the speed of which exceeds the speed of even the fastest fiction, and many times over. If reality doesn't even have time to take the shape of reality, how could art have the time? It is impossible, and that is why art increasingly takes the form of imitation. You can easily produce an imitation of an art film, and the most important thing in a simulation is precisely the production. Baudrillard already understood at the beginning of television that we don't watch television, but television watches us. It’s evident that his idea has been expanded into contemporary cinema and computers as well. Nonetheless, the big question is; If a film looks at us, how does it look at us? I think the answer is obvious; It looks at us
seductively.
Art has only one true will, and that is to seduce. Whether it is The Venus de Milo, or Francis Bacon's Crucifixion triptych, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, or Mona Lisa, all these works have the sole desire to seduce their viewer. And they seduce us with their appearance. Appearance is art's only means of seduction, not meaning. If art has any meaning, that meaning is attached to its appearance. They are inseparable. They areone and the same thing. There is something endlessly fascinating and mysterious about appearances precisely because they don't lend themselves to interpretation. Seduction makes appearances move in the form of a secret. And there is hardly anything more seductive than a secret. Therefore, if a filmmaker wants to reinvent cinema, he/she
must descend to the realm of the secret and evoke and seduce appearances, whether they are familiar, obscure, or both, to circulate, move and perform in a new way. Anything other than this will end up being an imitation.
Both of my previous films, M and W, are suggestive and seductive. M seduces the viewer to follow the ritual of seduction itself, in which sexuality and death, seemingly opposing. forces, eventually become inextricably intertwined. W takes the spectator to the “back
stage" and involves her / him in a sadomasochistic act, an empty perverse ritual. This happens in the threatening proximity of war. W's aesthetic is seductive decadence, although it’s subconscious urge is to kill seduction with it’s (theatrical) hysteria, and begin an apocalyptic cycle. It shows how sadomasochism, violence and collective
indifference have always preceded the destruction of cultures. The "meaning" of both M and W is fully realized in their appearance, and I strive for the same with my new film.
Every detail is a sign, a symbol in itself. This way, the film follows the “logic” of an abstract poem or a hallucinatory dream. I don't wish to satisfy the viewer with easy and obvious solutions. My aim is to respond to those deep and unconscious wishes, fears and desires that are located in the area of the collective unconscious. I consider allegory and symbolism an inseparable part of cinematography. They are especially
invaluable in manifesting ancient truths, unchanged by time. I also want to create completely new, modern myths in my films.
In my new work, I primarily aim to express transcendence; Sand is the ashes of the past, but also the raw material of a new, yet unborn world. The characters of the film are on their “soul journey”. I will demonstrate Baudrillard's vision of the "desert of reality" as both a concrete and symbolic location, because this way I will avoid twisting his core
idea of the simulacrum too much; For most of the characters the desert is more of a mindset. The characters in the film wander in the desert without remembering how they ended up there. Some of them have been in the desert for so long that remembering isn't even relevant anymore. They might better be said to have been moved into the desert. Their external habitus seems to be detached from their environment. They do
not belong in the desert. They feel neither hunger nor thirst. The setting is not dystopian.
Their lives are not threatened. They walk almost non-stop, as if they are resolutely on their way somewhere. When they get tired, they rest in the shadows of the dunes. Their paths cross, they meet each other, but don't actually sense each other's presence.
Random dialogues seem disjointed, like soliloquies. Sometimes they seem to come together and make sense.(The great monotheistic religions were once born in the desert, and perhaps they will
also die there; In the ever-expanding deserts of realities and souls.) Nietzsche claimed that God is dead. I personally claim that He has moved into Baudrillard's "desert of the real". In my film, the sand is spirit and divinity. It seduces and entices the characters to become one with the desert. To become an extension of the silence of the desert. What at first appears to be emptiness and desolation is in the end a strange form of fulfillment. The desert lives, breathes and embraces these lonely souls. If the theme of the film had to be summed up in one sentence, it would be: The loneliness of modern humankind. As a theme, I think this is acute and universal. Our society has never been more networked than it is now and yet so many of its inhabitants feel crushing loneliness, and a gnawing sense of insignificance and rootlessness.
We have quietly moved into a time of incurable melancholy, which is a completely natural consequence of living in a system that repels the human soul. Like the characters in the film, we wander in the setup of reality, in the deserts of signs, no longer even knowing how to express what we are really looking for, let alone, what we need.