Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: SELF-PORTRAIT [SxSW Film 2022 - Virtual]

The aspect of experimental visions is the aspect of letting its possibilities wash over you. With "Self Portrait" [Visions], the idea of what we are looking at is bathed in stillness but it reflects in sound too. What is interesting too in director Joële Walinga's tapestry is what is real in the sound mix and what is created. The intention is to not really know where we are looking at. One can only guess certain places that the cameras focuses on. Granted the point is that this footage was all from unlocked surveillance cameras that people can access (or likely webcams for property purposes). One sometimes is hoping for something dramatic like a crocodile coming out of the surf but Wilinga seems interested in the progression, not of life, but of place.

One image that stands out undeniably (and is one of the only ones of its kind in the film) is a camera in what seems in the middle of the ocean near a wind farm as the wind blows the waves relentlessly. It is visceral but also riveting. Some spaces like ones in a parking lot after hours in Tokyo or China or a night vision shot with lights and a huge mountain in the darkness take into account that we are simply passengers at times in the night. Some images and footage are obscured though the pummeling of snow and rain seems to be a recurrently motif. Tractor trailers continue on roads through the night and through the day, perhaps a reflection of the never ending circle of commerce. But the beginning and ending notes with wire retracting into the clouds near a gondola keeps the texture of heaven and earth at bay. "Self Portrait" is a view at the mirror of our world, not in its strengths or weakness but simply from corners we tend to forget. B

By Tim Wassberg