Confessions to the Mirror.
Confessions to the Mirror (2016) is a film that continues Pucill’s long-term research on the photographer and writer Claude Cahun (1894–1954). The film explores Cahun’s radical surrealist work and life, and mobilises the techniques of the tableaux vivants and the filmic restaging of photographic archives in order to propose a new form for engaging with Cahun’s oeuvre. Pucill’s research moves beyond formal documentary processes to provide insights into the artist’s work which are of particular relevance to contemporary cultural discourse. The film has been shown internationally at film festivals and gallery presentations, including: Creteil International Women’s Film Festival; Dortmund / Cologne International Women’s Film Festival; White Cube and National Portrait Gallery; London Film Festival; Ottawa Art Gallery. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- qvq82
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Pucill’s research process involves exploring Cahun’s life in Jersey, together with that of her partner and collaborator Marcel Moore, particularly during the Nazi occupation, and studying Cahun’s posthumously published memoir, Confidences au Miroir, and the photographs Cahun and Moore made on the island. The structure and experimental language of Pucill’s film develops an intermedial form for contemplating artistic legacy and relating to historic works and archives, where celluloid and digital, stillness and movement, black and white and colour are points of intersection in an indeterminate narrative.
In its particular use of tableaux vivants, Confessions to the Mirror provides a methodology to bring together the written text and still images of a historic artist, while at the same time bringing what is historical into the present through a material reinvention. The film provided new insights into the shifting critical context around Cahun and her collaboration with Moore whilst privileging both her artistic and political work, and proposing a novel form of collaboration between a historic and a contemporary artist.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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