Charis Vivante

This is the third and most extensive part of the cycle Eryngium. The essential theme is the migrations that have populated our world, starting from ancient India and descending into Greece and Western Europe.The film’s conceit is that this movement is still in progress. The characters are shown in transit, as if they were part of an ancient caravan. While they move they make up myths and they worship the Great Goddess,impersonating her story. Thus she appears as young girl and mature woman, and is evoked in the stories and music given on the soundtrack: the Virgin of Bach’s Magnificat, the Sulamite of Stockhausen’s Song of Solomon (“I am black but comely”), tales by Herodotus, Kafka, Villon (as set to music by Ezra Pound). A section is devoted to the idea of celebration, where the migrants get together to worship the life-principle. Later the film moves back to the individual and solitude.

The film seeks to question how a certain image is perceived. The point of departure is a photograph of a street in Palestine. Later the camera moves to show that the photo includes (in a rear mirror) the image of the photographer with a camera. Finally, the image is reversed as in a mirror. The film is constituted of four unedited rolls of 100-feet 16mm reels, one of which was previously exposed in an 8mm camera.