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About Private City by OLIVIER BRAS
‘Private City’ is a dream-like ‘impression’ video. Geert Wachtelaer interweaves powerful levels of meaning, without resorting to cinematographic tricks or special effects. At first glance, he is acting as just a temporary prophet, but records his surroundings in an impressive way. The metropolis in the form of a number of desolate cityscapes is bleakly explored and displays just minuscule mechanical movements, void of any human warmth. Enhanced by startling sounds—dark, somber and desolate—the senseless emptiness of this cold city becomes a harsh reality.
Is it ‘too late’, as the graffiti on the wall reads? No, because luckily there is an antithesis to this alienation. Fortunately, there is a reaction in the shape of a person, real flesh and blood. A woman who internally objects to the vulnerability of her existence and her surroundings. An initially dislocated being yearning to escape from her cocoon. A solitary archetype—guardian of all life—wandering in search of identity, in search of her own ‘Private City’…
Geert Wachtelaer could not have chosen a better performer for this role than Emilie De Vlam. She fulfills her role simply brilliantly. Every fiber, every muscle of her body is placed under enormous, intolerable strain. For many minutes she is embroiled in a struggle for life. A sparkling performance. Doesn't she literally embody the horror of her fate? In a sensual, passionate piece of self expression, she examines and eats—virginally and innocently—leaves and earth. Or is she really so innocent? Could this woman be the modern-day ‘Diana’, the governess of the wild animals who acts as the protector of purity, challenging the decline and immorality of the city? Her ‘Private City’ is continuously taking shape. You can smell the woodland and taste her lips. Abandoned in a yearning glow, exhausted but satisfied, she mixes with the natural elements to eventually melt together with the inner fibers of a tree … there are plenty of Freudian theories to consider here: sufficient scope for interpretation. But aside from that, these scenes are put together in a beautiful way and are filmed with intensity.
With ‘Private City’, Geert Wachtelaer highlights the eternal balancing act between the forces that surround us. The forces between man and wife, earth and air, fidelity and infidelity, modernity and tradition, loyalty and betrayal… but above all, between passion and emptiness. Nobody can withstand the emptiness. A
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