Artist Ann Oren’s feature debut, a film about curious mutations and the place of the natural and the social in human identity. The premiere took place at the Locarno Film Festival.
Zara, who works as a Foley artist, has a nervous breakdown. Her introvert sister Eva decides to help her and do a job for an eccentric and demanding client. She has to produce realistic sound for a horse and the noises it makes while performing piaffe, a rhythmic trot or dancing movement on the spot. Gradually Eva becomes so immersed in the role that she begins to turn into a hybrid of a person and an animal.
Ann Oren is a Berlin-based Israeli artist. Her works have been shown at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (Austria), and many other venues. She explores the boundaries of social and behavioral conventions that people observe in everyday life, testing these boundaries and unravelling the extra-social motifs of the life of her characters. The natural or the animal are the driving force of their stories. In observing horses and imitating their unfamiliar behavior, such as slow and confident movements, Eva changes. The floor of a spacious room is scattered with objects and materials used to imitate various sounds. Eva uses each in turn and is transformed from an introverted and anxious girl into a being that is calm and focused.
Piaffe is deliberately decorative. The story of the sisters is full of absurd situations and the film’s universe is reminiscent of the worlds of Wes Anderson and Monty Python. Moments of realism and life appear on the screen when Eva begins to work on the sound, becoming an object of imitation. This imitation is a kind of rite through which the main character attains freedom from conventions.
The film will be shown in German and English with Russian subtitles.
Piaffe
Director Ann Oren
Germany, 2022. 86 min.
18+