City Dusk: Between Daydream and Nightmare (2006) User Reviews

The uncanny world hidden behind the paintings of Jerusalem artist Talia Trainin

[elenacan · 6/10 · 17 April 2009]

The film unfolds the uncanny world hidden behind the paintings of Jerusalem artist Talia Trainin. My camera pans through her urban landscapes, creating a tale of silent cities, distant childhood memories, gloomy nights, lonely alleys and imposing buildings from foreign European cities. Interlaced with associations, poems and writings from contemporary and more distant periods, the film penetrates into her unsettling images, rendering the dramatic events of this and of the previous century. In the words of Trainin, "the lens unfolds x ray images, excavating nostalgia, penetrating the opacity of past and present. It unfurls the nightmarish debris of centuries that accumulates as irresoluble, asphyxiating wreckage. In this visual archeology of the mind successive temporal layers meet, defying linear time." And still, as the audience becomes a witness of the cities' past splendour, and of the scars inflicted upon them by wars and massacres, a new dawn rises, awakening a glimpse of hope.