For this assignment, I went to the Museum of Modern Arts; and watched Prayers to the Stolen, directed by Tatiana Huezo. Prayers to the stolen is a film about the story of three little girls who become teenagers in a time where their small town in Mexico is at war. The film is compelling from the start as it takes place in a poor, small town where everyone knows each other. The film begins with images of  Ana one of the three little girls playing in the dirt with her mother. The film suddenly changes tone a couple of minutes into the film, as the mother asked, the little girl to get inside a hole they dug. The image of the little girl inside the hole lingered on the screen for longer than comfortable, foreshadowing what was to come.

Later on in the film Ana and her mother were doing their daily chores, all of a sudden, they hear a vehicle approaching their house in the distance. The mother cues Ana to hide. A group of men gets off the vehicle. Ana’s mother opens the door with a machete behind her back. The men ask for her daughter, to which she answers that she only has one son. The group of men furious go through her house confirming what she had told them. To their surprise, they couldn’t find anything against her. They left but before they did they fired a gun in her direction to send a message. Ana’s mother ran to the hole where Ana was hiding to her relief Ana was without harm as the men did not find her. They both laid inside the hole crying. This scene was beyond powerful as it pretty much comes full circle revealing to the viewer the reason for the earlier images in the film. It also shows the state of the town and how those people lived in constant fear. The main issue presented in this film is that the narcos would randomly come into those small towns and go house by house for their young daughters.

The lighting looked so minimal as if one was physically there in the location where the story took place. Also, the lighting looks so flawless and compliments the actor’s complexion nicely. In terms of music and sound, this film doesn’t have as much dialogue but in the scenes where silence is predominant, it also plays a big role in the overall meaning of the film. It captures the fear of the characters and also how the kidnaps have affected the community and how they dealt with their pain and grief for the stolen. The sound design was rich with various sound elements both used to add suspense and to capture the world of the story. The camera movements looked convention for a fictional film; however, in some instances, some of the shots seemed to be in a documentary style. For example, in a scene, one of the three girls were on their way to school when a helicopter was passing by it released some kind of poison in the air. The girl notices and runs faster to her school. When she gets there the other two girls from their friend group go after her into the restroom where they both quickly pour water all over her. In this scene, the camera follows them into an intimate space and shows them being vulnerable to the attacks but also being united in that process. The tracking shot of the characters into the restroom rather than cutting to it made the scene feel more like a documentary rather than fictional. It felt as if the viewer was living that horrendous experience with the characters

The first film, Singing in Oblivion by Eve Heller, was a short film about life and death. The film starts off with a wide shot of a tomb as various birds are heard chirping creating a song-like audio piece. A unique contrast between the birds singing and the black and white images of the cemetery. No words and no people other than old photographs altered with a negative filter. The way the images would change rapidly it seems as the people on the photographs are not only dead but they’re ghosts. Some images looked a bit creepy and with the negative filter, the people’s faces weren’t as clear. There was one image of a little girl whose eyes were looking up she looked like she was possessed. Later on, the images changed their pace and would linger on the screen removing the filter to reveal the people’s faces as if to demonstrate that they were full of life. There were also images of different chains running vertically through the screen as film stock would. The images were different and unexpected as they kept running to reveal what looked like a clock at the end of the chain. I thought that it was poetic and I read that image as a representation of a person’s life span given the clock at the end was revealed that the person’s time was up. The film however ended with a close-up shot of a baby covered in a blanket in a women’s arms. I really liked how the filmmakers decided to end the film with just one image of the baby as the story comes full circle with it. Also how the sound was the same throughout the film with the birds chirping in harmony. The film overall had a peaceful tone to it.

The second film, This Day’s Madness did Prepare Tomorrow’s Silence by David Gatten, was a 90-minute film about a slightly harder concept to crack. Honestly, I don’t really know exactly what it was about. It had a similar concept to the previous short film about the life and the passing of time. The film starts with a black screen with Impromptu No.4 in C-Sharp Minor, Op.66 by Yoshimi Fujimura playing in the background. After the instrumental was over then glimpses of the ocean, the sky, and a yacht were shown. The shot’s pace was fast so it seemed like someone’s POV while waking up. That was my initial thought but as the film progressed the same style in shots continued throughout the film. It was a bit uncomfortable to watch because the images were usually bright images and then it cut back to a dark screen. In terms of audio, there was barely any sound design done in this film so all 90 minutes of the film was pretty much silent. The only sound that I was able to hear was of a faint heartbeat on several occasions. Before screening the film the filmmakers said that film was going to appear to be longer than it actually was and honestly I felt that. The film in my experience was hard to watch and I could not see everything being shown entirely as it cut so fast. They also did not have any kind of dialogue instead they had messages written in a notepad. Overall the film was experimental and I have not seen anything like this film. I did not enjoy it entirely as it was uncomfortable for my eyes to watch giving the flashes of the cuts but it was nice to see something different.