Melancholia (short, 2003)
Directors: William Basinski, James Elaine
Duration: 3mins30s
Super-8/video, USA, 2003
"All the world is melancholy, every member in it."
–Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.
"Melancholy is a way of thinking, a way of thinking about thinking, and it needs to consume the sufferer and thus needs layers and strata and veneers in perpetuity in which to cloak and conceal itself." –Rick Moody, The Black Veil.
In Melancholia, one is immediately transfixed by the lilting, repetitive piano melody of Basinski's "The Saddest Melody Ever Heard". Drawn slowly through the dark veil of a lonely tunnel of trees, eventually the world is revealed, shining deceptively. Immediately one begins a bumpy journey around a dull and hollow shell, before being drawn back, away through the encroaching black veil that cloaks and colors all perception. Shot in Super-8 at the World's Fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows, Queens, NY, Elaine & Basinski's Melancholia is a concise, darkly romantic psalm, an elegy, a love letter to a broken world.
#short #music #ambient #art #artstr
#kinostr #kino #shorts #film #filmstr
#filmart
