Cut (film)
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2004
Video film, format 16×9, black and white, English, French or Chinese dialogue, 8’10
Cut leads us into a slow-motion night ramble through a city suburb, at a very busy motorway interchange. At the end of the film we see the solitary figure of a man walking purposefully along the road. Because the images in the filmed version of Cut are obtained by “re-filming” with a hand-held camera the original film (projected for this installation), the black and white images are unstable and blurred, full of variations and distortions; they produce a dream-like atmosphere. The soundtrack consists of the voice of a woman describing the relationship she has been having with a western man over seven days and seven nights in her birthplace, Shanghai. This creates a kind of road movie with three characters, Him, Her and the City. The title refers to two basic operations in the film-making process – the interruption of filming, and excisions made during editing – but also to the break between the characters in the story.
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