FOCII

UK | 1974 | 12 min

This film was developed within the London Filmmaker's Cooperative, conceived and based at Better Books, a counterculture bookshop in Charing Cross Road where a group guided by the poet Bob Cobbing and the filmmakers Stephen Dwoskin and Jeff Keen used to meet for film screenings and, later on, for making films by interfering manually with the prints. In Focii performance, experimental cinema, and dance meet: a woman dances and mimes, with her white, clearcut image moving on a red floor reflected on a wall of shattered mirrors. During her performance, her mirror image gradually takes on an autonomous identity and what was a central relationship between the self and the self becomes one between the self and the other. Exploring the emotional change made possible by the physical quality of the cellulose, Focii is not only focused on the construction of the self and the dynamics between the self and the other, but also on the interplay between the body of the viewer and the one on the screen, raising questions on the nature of identification in cinema. (l.d.)