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'Marble Dust' is a film that champions liberation through the wondrous power of art - its capacity for transcendent beauty, its reflective power as a catalyst for empathy, and its ability to show a window into inner worlds. Oftentimes, words aren’t enough, so our protagonist Andi expresses what words cannot with her art to create a new beginning. Being a sculptor, she uses her hands to gently sculpt and chisel as a way to combat the culmination of grief that manifests as the antagonist, Nick. As the poet Rainer Marie Rilke says in his book 'Auguste Rodin', on the great French sculptor, “Rodin’s great victory lies in the fact that he persevered and responded to destructiveness the way Nature does: with a new beginning […]” My film draws parallels between the protagonist Andi and Antigone from the greek tragedy, in their immovable determination to properly honor someone who means the world to them. As Rodin once said, “the artist must create a spark before he can make a fire, and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation”. Spurned on by the death of Lily, her lover, Andi is ready to be consumed by the flames made from a world built on lies, anger, holy hatred, and her own guilt. The world of 'Marble Dust' is a black and white dilapidated chapel that holds a storied history within its war-scarred walls. This chapel hosts the remnants of Lily’s broken family, who bear their own woeful history, adding to this fractured world. The same world that judges Andi for being a queer, “worldly” artist. To depict this bleak world, I drew inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s 'The Seventh Seal' for its oppressive, moody world. Bergman’s characters question their faith amidst the horrors occurring around them, resulting in a revelation that inspires the revelatory sequence in 'Marble Dust'. The dark, dreamy, gothic-tinged world of Ana Lily Amirpour’s 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' was another film world that inspired me. Amirpour’s ethereal camera and shadow play were important for me in shaping this world with my director of photography. The interplay between shadow and light, particularly in expressing the psychological waltz between Andi and the antagonist, Nick, is an intrinsic part of 'Marble Dust’'s ghostly world. I needed the camera to be somewhat voyeuristic, to swerve in and out, following certain characters and retreating from others. This is a depiction of the spirit of the deceased and is invaluable to this fractured world split between dream and reality. The dream as poetry was a concept I was drawn to in regard to Andi’s abstract inner world, depicted in the film as a white endless space where she sculpts clay. The dreamy abstract worlds depicted in the films of Jean Cocteau, specifically 'The Blood of a Poet' and 'Orpheus', were touchstones for the traversal between the outer and inner worlds. The surreal world of Juraj Herz’s 'The Cremator' inspired me in part, due to the political subtext that underscores its surreal elements. In 'Marble Dust', Andi’s inner world is fueled by grief—all-consuming guilt, in addition to the disguised grief of those around her. Coming to terms with that grief, and what that means for us as human beings, is a philosophy that I wanted to interrogate. There is no spiritual progress without empathy. It reveals to us the deepest understanding of one another. Empathy for all living things, and all things that were. Survivors' guilt, living with grief, and the need for empathy inform the world of 'Marble Dust' and its message of liberation from delusion through art.
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Duration | 19 Minutes |
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