Atlantics (2019) – Vampiric Projections: Into the Mirror


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Atlantique Frankrike-Senegal-Belgia 2019 Regi Mati Diop Med Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow, Ibrahima Traoré 1t 46m DCP Wolof & fransk tale, engelsk tekst Aldersgrense 12 år

Forestillinger

Dato

Tid

Billettsalg

Vampiric Projections

Søndag 19.11

17.00

Vampiric Projections

Torsdag 23.11

20.30

The first film from the Into the Mirror chapter of the Vampiric Projections, is Mati Diop’s Atlantique, from 2019. The movie, set in a beachfront town in Senegal, brings a refreshing and insightful treatment of mirror manifestations in cinema.

Film critic B. Ruby Rich wrote the following about Atlantics:
“This is a film that is about magic. It’s about good magic and black magic. … It’s about the in-between spaces, between here and there, between Europe and Africa, between those who are alive and those who are dead, between the past and the present and in a way between documentary and fiction.”

This chapter sets from the canonical absence of the vampire’s reflection in a mirror, with a selection of films that venture into alternative – and not necessarily explicitly vampiric – territories in this context.
A vampire in the same room as a mortal casts no mirror reflection to the latter’s eyes, because the vampire is there and not there at the same time. They, the un-dead, un-belong to 2 realms: they are not dead, but also not alive.

In the video essay project Vampiric Reflections Oscar Debs is working on, there are instances where a vampire can cast a reflection in the mirror.
Not only this, but a vampire (or even a phantom) can transform the image considerably inside the mirror. In successive gradations: at the first level, the mirror image can become distorted/unstable, and at a next level, it de-figures and disem-bodies the undead/revenant…

Oscar, who’s also working on the parallel curation branch Vampiric Projections at Cinemateket Trondheim, will follow the screening with a short analysis of Atlantique in the abovementioned framework.

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