Fovea Centralis

Philippe Rouy / France / 2014 / World Premiere / 50 min.

synopsis

Under significant pressure from the government and the media, the Fukushima nuclear power plant released video recordings from its closed circuit camera system. The recordings did not escape the censor’s reach: people’s faces are blurred and in some places, the sound has been removed. Using this material, the director assembled a meditative film-poem that skirts the fringe of video art. Using bricolage technique, the filmmaker combines multiple images, sound disruptions, and written text that are burned into the viewer’s mind like the image of a mushroom cloud on the retina, the center of which – the spot which creates the sharpest vision – is called the fovea centralis.

DETAIL:
“My forehead and chin lean on bars of cold metal. I hear an unknown’s man voice. The visual field of your left eye is reduced. You have a mark on your retina. It is shaped like an inverted mushroom.”

biography

Philippe Rouy is an audio-visual artist who lives and works in Paris. His focus is primarily on video art, but his filmography also includes documentary films such as Beyrouth, Littoral (2003) about a Quebecois theatre company’s performance in Lebanon. His video art productions are characterized by short segments, distinctive minimalism and forays into the philosophical.