Brussels filmmaker Sarah Vanagt composes a film programme with two of her most recent short films, topped with an invisible thief and some bewitching eggs from the early days of film.
De Ontwaring (Still holding still)
In the short film Still holding still, a 19th-century photographic practice is revived, a short-lived method of making children portraits, known as ‘Invisible Mothers’. Sarah Vanagt tries to enter ‘inside’ the photos, into the long exposure time required by the first cameras.
In Waking Hours
With the publication of Ophthalmographia in 1632, Dutch doctor Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius provides a highly original answer to the age-old question “how sight works”. His answer is an invitation for experimenting: “Enter a dark room with me and, there, prepare the eye of a freshly butchered cow.” He stresses that everyone can perform this experiment at home “with minimal effort and no cost whatsoever”.
In the short film In Waking Hours, historian Katrien Vanagt walks in the shoes of a 21st-century pupil of Plempius. Her cousin, filmmaker Sarah Vanagt, is there, filming how this modern Plempia follows the instructions of her tutor step by step. In a dark kitchen in Brussels, they become witnesses to the birth of images within the eye.
De Ontwaring:
BE, 2015, 10’, premiere
Concept: Sarah Vanagt
Photography (natte plaat collodium procédé): Jeroen de Wijs
Camera: Artur Castro Freire
Editing: Effi Weiss
Sound design: Philippe Ciompi
Camera assistant: Son Doan
With the support of: VAF, VGC, Argos Centre for Art and Media, Beursschouwburg
De Ontwaring has been selected for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, 2015.
In Waking Hours:
BE, 2015, 18’
Directed by Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vanagt
Camera: Artur Castro Freire
Editing: Effi Weiss
Sound: Nina de Vroome
Sound design: Philippe Ciompi
Camera assistant: Son Doan
With the support of: VAF, VGC, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Huygens ING – KNAW (The Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences), Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities Utrecht, Argos Centre for Arts and Media Brussels, Cinematek Brussels
