Veronique Inbar Art

About Artist's Work

Transformations

The film Transformations is composed of short shots of curtains, clips taken from feature films.
In the cinema those moments when the hero or the camera looks through the curtain, outwards, or inwards, are moments of contemplation. These are sort of in between situations, before or after something happening. Because of the cinema’s inability to describe an inner-world or contemplativeness, filmmakers use a cinematic idiom that describes such moments. The curtain, or more specifically its being pulled aside and then the look through the window, is one such popular idiom.
Even in everyday life curtains are a type of filter between the outside and the inside. They cover the windows, and enable controlling the amount of outside that is let in.
Cinematic curtains act as a filter between the actual outside and inside, and are a metaphor to the internal soul. The hero’s looking out through the curtain is often an imaging of looking inwards into their soul. Looking beyond what the camera can see to an in-between place where the person can reflect, think and at times reach a decision.
The idea behind the film Transformations was to examine whether it was possible to use one cinematic idiom, the curtains, and create from it a narrative. Similar to drawing over and over the same image with the result each time being slightly different, and the connection between the images creating the meaning. Or for me, defining a limited toolbox with which to work and using this constriction to create meaningful connections. The use of the cinematic montage enables connecting between different shots and charges them with new meaning. The use of shots of curtains is transformative, and creates a shift from the original meaning because of the closeness of one shot of curtains to the next.
The opening and closing, the repetition, act as a metaphor to the constant change of life, the cycle of life. Like the seasons, so too part of the film reflects a different “mood”. The meaning is created from the charging of shots close in their nature, adjacent one to the other, and from the montage’s sequence.
The cinematic curtain is full of meaning. It is imbued with all that the cinema cannot say. In the space between the words, a place of changes. Where men and women look for a solution or wait for one. The curtain separates between the mundane and the exalted or the threatening, (and at times the horror happens behind it), the curtain calls to me as the viewer to come and peek, a curtain that is open wide or one that is closed, blocking my view.

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