All of Nina Danino's films concentrate a complex
connection of ideas, images and illusions into tightly filmed, edited and
performed works that create an intense and emotional effect in the
mind.
Her films have a material presence. She is keen to make the viewer
aware that they are watching a film, a projection that is happening in
time and space in which the film comes into presence before the eyes. The
physical properties of film are exploited to the full, whether in the
crystalline quality of the images in Temenos or the swirling hand-held
camerawork and saturated colours of Stabat Mater. Although her films
are not narratively driven, Danino is concerned about progression. She
leads the viewer through an experience of gathering intensity, but always,
returns them to an earthy reality, whether in the city in Temenos or the
cemetery in Now I am Yours. Nevertheless, the experience of the film
transports the viewer to a place transformed, seen with new eyes.
As a filmmaker, Danino is unusual in her privileging of the voice. She
sees the voice immediate and pure, unencumbered by material form. She
performs the voice-over in all her films, describing her own experiences
and thoughts, and quoting from others- visionaries, poets, writers.
Combined with that are vocal performances by established sound
artists.
Religious experience permeates the majority of Nina Danino's later
films. They are imbued with a Catholic understanding of spirituality, but
whether it is the Marian visionaries in Temenos or St Teresa in Now I
am Yours, the transcendental experiences are personalised through the
experience of the women themselves. Here, the strictly conformist
Catholic interpretation breaks down and the power and pleasure of the
women shine through. They are visionaries, their apparitions and thoughts
cannot be controlled but instead carry them to another realm of fulfilment
and abandonment. The way that Danino portrays St Teresa with close-ups on
the mouth and figure reclining backwards, there is no doubt that she is
experiencing sexual ecstasy. Her body, as well as her mind is penetrated
by the divine. This is jouisance- performed excess, a physical response
to the performance of the camera and the performance of the voice.
Disruption is a key theme in Danino's work. She disrupts the image
though her structured editing, at once giving it presence and absence
through the cut. She interrupts the dominance of the image though the
intervention of sound that distracts the viewer from the tyranny of the
visual. Her work is about traversing boundaries between present and
absent subjects, known and unknowable experiences, defined and undefined
spaces, rational and irrational understandings, and, of course, the
ultimate boundary, that between life and death. At the heart of her work
is a struggle, a yearning to grasp the ungraspable. Her films present an
irresistible allure to follow them into the realm of angels, at whatever
cost.
