Darkness, Darkness, Burning Bright

A unique screening of Gaëlle Rouard’s atmospheric film diptych, Darkness, Darkness, Burning Bright projected by the artist from her personal 16mm print.

Unfolding across two acts – Prelude and Oraison – Darkness Darkness, Burning Bright is a personal and poetic work full of expressive solarized nightscapes and pastoral unreality. The film draws us into a  crepuscular landscape, where animals and plants appear luminous and rendered in chiaroscuro, with the movements playing out through a series of tableau vivant composed from the combination of photochemically manipulated still and moving images. Produced using found sounds and drawing on the traditions of musique concrète and cinéma pour l’oreille (cinema for the ear), Rouard’s soundtrack oscillates between supporting ambience and pronounced narrative emphasis.

Darkness, darkness, burning bright
In the forests of the night
Vast flowered paths, fresh branches,
Groves full of perfumes, birds and whispers, 
Site often seen again, and always contemplated

Darkness, darkness, burning bright
In the forests of the night
And the mad impulse of this distraught soul,
And that had, the forehead circled in copper, under the moon

Frail herbs, tender branches, hollyhocks,
And the shadow that brushes and the wind that knots,
And strongly, with the fists of its clouds,
On the greenish horizon, crushes suns.

Programmed by Oliver Dickens for Sonic Cinema. Special thanks to Isabelle Manci & Angela Blanc at the Institut français.

Supported by Institute Francais Royaume-Uni.