Sur les Fleurs la Nuit

I am really pleased to announce that my new short film, "Sur les Fleurs la Nuit" will premiere at the 34th Festival of Instants Video on the 11th of November

This video was born from a text I had written aged 18 with the idea to initially present it as a two-person play. At the time I had dreamt of having my own tender Vladimir and Estragon duo, in a folly of darkness and surrounded by endless bouquets of flowers. I had written the text in a feverish state of excitement, and sent it as an email to Sam, who at the time was living in Canterbury. He replied later on that same night with "This is really good!!!" and that was enough to fulfil me and have me move on to other things for some 10 years, before I picked it up again last year. While I have not completely ruled out the theatre idea, I moved on to translating the text to French and adapting it as a monologue to accompany a montage of flowers I had shot in the last two years in Malta and France.

The original text was initiated by my night-time walks back home in Marsaskala. The neighbour had a jasmine bush whose perfume would always successfully interrupt my thoughts or mood after whatever activity I was engaged in (whether an exciting or a boring one). The scent served as a form of sensory checkpoint that affirmed my existence at that very moment. I can not help but compare this feeling to falling in love, when one’s thoughts are constantly consumed by an impenetrable feeling of presence, so it was natural for me to articulate my feeling at the scent of the jasmine bush in the same way I articulate the feeling of love: as one laced with equal parts affection and eroticism.

All flowers at night are nothing short of intense or beautiful, and in my attempt to capture them in low-light conditions I am visually isolating them from their surroundings to demand attention from the viewers and remind them of the attractive force and strong effect these flowers have on all living creatures. As Iris Murdoch once said, “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things around us.”

                                                                                                                                          some stills from "Sur les Fleurs la Nuit" 2021

                                                                                                                                     Instants Video