In Focus: Jessica Sarah Rinland 2

The programme:

Darse Cuenta / 2008 / 3’ 

One of Rinland’s early experiments with 16mm, Darse Cuenta (which can be loosely translated as “to become aware” or “to notice”) is reminiscent of structural cinema in its use of a single 100ft roll of film. An unidentifiable image appears and disappears (is it a window?), whilst in the soundtrack, someone (the filmmaker?) reads a poem by Argentine psychotherapist Jorge Bucay, in which the protagonist recounts daily and futile attempts to avoid falling in a hole in the middle of the road. As the days go by, the repetitive narration reaches a hypnotic climax.

Expression of the Sightless / 2016 / 7’

“A statue in white marble presents a scene from Greek mythology in which the boy Hylas, the companion of Hercules, goes to collect water from a stream, as is lured into the depths by water nymphs who are entranced by his beauty.” Thus described John Gibson in 1837 his statue Hylas surprised by the Naiade that Rinland films in Tate Britain, as it’s being explored – and narrated – by the inquisitive hands of a blind man. The camera’s tight focus on the hands, and the knowledge that can be gained through touch are prescient of later works by Rinland that foreground the tactile.

Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another/ 2019 /  68’ 

Jessica Sarah Rinland’s mesmerising debut feature-length work intimately examines the process of museological and ecological conservation through the production of a lab-engineered replica of an elephant tusk. Working alongside conservators in various institutions across the world, Rinland traces the tusk through its many stages of construction, revealing the exacting craft and care involved in the physical reproduction of the natural world. With tactile, tightly framed 16mm photography and delicate, detailed sound design, Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another is a close study of the people and processes behind the production of museum objects, and a probing inquiry into the act – and art – of preserving and constructing history.

Querida Chick / 2021 / 7’

A film for Chick Strand, commissioned by Punto de Vista for the project “LAS CARTAS QUE NO FUERON TAMBIÉN SON/THE LETTERS THAT WEREN’T AND ALSO ARE” for which several filmmakers were commissioned to make filmed letters addressed to another filmmaker they did not know personally. In hers, Rinland shares a conversation with her mother, who she had asked to watch Strand’s Fake Fruit Factory (1986), a film, like Rinland’s Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another, concerned with the idea of replica. Rinland’s mother tells her “Parecía una película tuya” (it seemed like one of your movies).

Followed by a Q&A with Jessica Sarah Rinland