Zum Keller!

2020

3 mins

 

Currently on show for Hello World, a global, online art exhibition by Transcultural Exchange featuring artists and cultural venues from 70 countries. You can watch the film via Max's artist page here

 

Zum Keller! (To the cellar!) is a film about the things we send to the cellar of our home; the possessions - and the memories that are connected to them - we store away, out of sight.

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In Zum Keller! a box of photographs, letters and mementos, are being brought down to a cellar, to be placed in the holder’s storage unit. Once the box has been put down and whilst other contents of the unit are shuffled around and brought out, the box reveals to the viewer the contents that lay within it.

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The rolling text that appears over the image of the box is a letter to a loved one, written a long time ago. As the contents of the letter are slowly disclosed, the viewer’s eyes shift between the rolling text, the photographs lain directly under the box’s lid and the two individuals moving within the frame. The viewer draws connections between these three elements, imagining the life of the one who writes the letter, the one who receives it and the remaining loved ones, written about and encircling this narrative. The people in the photographs are presumed to be the ones written about and consequently, a glimmer of the life and history of a family emerge.

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A film by Max Boutwell Draper