Melisa Liebenthal

Film

Aquí y allá s a film in the first person centred on the concept of home. The project emerged from a reflection on GPS technology and a personal feeling of distance between the place where I am physically and the idea of home. I wonder where my home is, but am unable to answer.

The film begins with a full-screen image of Google Earth with a character, myself speaking off-screen. I move through the places in my memory as if I could really be there through the software’s mimetic, documentary and opaque images. Virtual space, real space, mental space... Where are we?

Through the play of experimentation and the materiality of images, the film creates uncertainty as to what we are looking at: is it a CGI image, a screen grab, or an image on paper? What is the scale of what we are looking at? What, in fact are we looking at?

In the film, we go from the virtual to reality and vice versa through deceptive transitions like magical effects. When we finally see my character, she is in an office which is at the same time the set for the film. She directs the narration of the film from the front of the camera. The film’s character and the narration become a single entity.

Here or there? Both at the same time.

Melisa Liebenthal

Melisa Liebenthal (1991) is a director who lives in Argentina and France. Her films combine the personal and the ordinary with reflections that touch on universal subjects. Her first feature film, Las lindas (2016, 77 min), won prizes at the international festivals of Rotterdam, BAFICI and Asterisco LGBTIQ (Buenos Aires). Her short Constanza (2018, 26 min) was shown at BAFICI 2019. She is currently working on her second feature film, El rostro de la medusa, with the support of the Hubert Bals Fund and the BAL - BAFICI.

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