When I first decided to make this particular film, I had a very clear idea of how the major themes would play out, long before I even set up my camera. I set out to make a film that explored the emotions behind a particular event or phenomena, rather than tell a story. My goal was to make a film that functioned in a vertical spectrum, rather than the horizontal conventions of classical narration. As far as the actual emotions captured in this film, I cannot definitively say what happens because the film is, for me and for every member of the audience, a different experience. Anything I would say now would be, to quote Cocteau's address on the premier of Blood of a Poet, "text written after the images."
In a sense, my film echoes Eisenstein's theory on montage. The film is entirely composed of seemingly unrelated images, held together by a thin wisp of smoke. When I began filming, I thought that this would be my primary means of communicating emotion and theme. I wanted all the shots to be very tightly framed, to add an element of tension or claustrophobia to the frame. However, as I began to look at the footage, I realized that I was focusing more on Balász's theories of the lyrical charm of the close up, and the camera's ability to discover the human face, the most subjective manifestation of a man.
Looking at the film now, it seems that I was searching for a particular answer or understanding in the faces I photographed. I am not sure if film actually answers the question I had planned, but I tried to incorporate my personal frustration with the answer's elusiveness in the film. Personally, I see the film as a nature documentary if anything, but what is important is how you see my film.
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