This short video is based in Paris in the year 2020. A beautiful couple enjoys a day taking pictures together. Then, suddenly, everything changes.
The technologically advanced brilliant holograms and digital streams until it comes face to face with a strange contraption: an old Polaroid camera.
Tomorrow will never be the same.
A deeper look:
– While the man’s eyes are constantly browsing, analyzing, controlling, the woman’s vacillate between him and a distant horizon. In the moment of embrace, she smiles, while he takes more pictures. Then, a tragic disconnect surfaces between the two, eloquently illustrated in the abrupt encounter between the digital camera and the Polaroid. The climax occurs when she resigns, takes the picture, hands him the photo, and walks away.
Apostolic Elements:
– Imagine that the Polaroid photo represents all those values that are stable and lasting and yet considered now “antiquated”: faithfulness, perseverance, love, simplicity and sacrifice. The digital camera and hologram represent all those values that are ephemeral: sophistication, the sensation of control (he can pick and choose which photo he likes or not), the approval of the others (the video mentions the views), convenience, and immediacy.
– The camera/projector serves initially as a mere tool. Afterwards, it expands, and absorbs more and more of his attention. The instrument transforms into a secondary environment into which he inserts himself, leaving behind all that is real, losing all that is consistent.
– What is our approach to reality and to our relationships? Which comes first, the real, living, breathing person walking by your side or the fascinating, yet isolating and easily erasable images?
– In the end, what remains? What really matters? Have we lost track of what is real and truly valuable?
Original Video Title: Lost Memores (French and English Subtitles).
Written, directed, and produced by: Francois Ferraci.
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