Dear Darkness, Film, 35mm, 30min, 2021, Antoinette Zwirchmayr

In Dear Darkness, Antoinette Zwirchmayr lets three former best friends meet in a villa that has fallen out of time. She places them with all their expectations, insecurities and fears in twelve pictures, in rooms that radiate the stately splendor of a lost era and the sober abstraction of a black box. Caught between the desire to present a good picture and to open up to others, the women stand still and freeze. In the interplay of body and language, poses and glances, decor and costumes, however, the chamber play sets in dazzling movement. The realm of signs and allegories is highly condensed, the references range from film melodrama, minimal art, romantic songs to the theater of the absurd.

Text by Esther Buss