A blind king, his daughter, and 35mm film walk into the wilderness.
Dean’s work is characterized by a sense of history, time and place, light quality, and the essence of the film itself. In line with these themes, the project will compose of a two-screen 35 mm film installation celebrating the quality and techniques of photochemical film. Derived from the origin of her own sister’s name, Antigone takes its starting point from the undramatized part between two of Sophocles’ three Theban plays, Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, whose mythological character, Antigone, guides her blind and lame father, Oedipus, through the wilderness. The film will underscore the importance of film experimentation and highlight the endeavor of film, as a medium, to find a form between art, cinema and theater.
Cinematography
Hand-processed 35mm that breathes and flickers with life.
Direction
Dean's radical patience lets myth unfold like weather.
Production
Two-screen installation dissolves cinema into pure experience.
Director
Tacita Dean
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Tacita Dean shot this during her campaign to save 35mm film from extinction, making Antigone itself an act of preservation.
The 'undramatized' narrative Dean chose—Antigone guiding her father through wilderness—mirrors the film medium's own liminal state between obsolescence and art.
US
