INPUT / … / … / Camera’s steady gaze

A camera loaded with film or tape. A human face loaded with emotion and experience. The camera hits the face and stays there. It’s all set for a long meeting, but what do you see? The depth of one particular life, or the condition of us all? The psychology or social condition of an individual? The preconceptions of a producer? ... or a genuine discovery? You think it’s Hollywood – but it turns out it really exists. With striking beauty, THE HIGLHLY EXALTED observes the life of nine cowboys making thirteen dollars a day, in the American west. You do not see a face, and you never finally know the identity of two victims of incest who, in NOT ONE ROOM WAS SAFE, reveal the depth of their personal degradation with their faces averted from the camera’s gaze. It’s called a declining industry, but it is the very lifeblood of the NEW ENGLAND FISHERMEN who, held in bright, tight close-up, tell outrageous and often funny stories. You do not see the eyes of THE VOICE, arriving on tape from America from the brother of Vasil Popjanescu in Yugoslavia, whose closely watched and relentlessly solitary life is enlivened only by this voice.