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Schlafbau

Helen Mirra

1995 00:14:30 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3

Description

Taking its title from a poem by Paul Celan (translated as “sleeping den”), this montage is the result of a script that reconfigures over two hundred lines of English subtitles, lifted from films ranging from Battleship Potemkin and Persona, to The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. The disconcerting soliloquy on love and insomnolence is deliberately attempted in the original French, German, Russian, Italian, and Swedish.

This title is also available on Helen Mirra Videoworks: Volume 1.

About Helen Mirra

Helen Mirra has worked in a range of media including video, sound, text, and sculpture, and her practice has come to be focused in the activity of walking. Her interest in the history of cinema, film structure, and childhood development influence her early single-channel video works. The alchemic results deal with interpretation, translation, and estrangement.