The Head
Calgary, 2010
5:00
Dir: Aran Wilkinson-Blanc
HD Video and Still Images
Experimental
There are three distinct sections to this glossy and very creepy experimental piece by Aran Wilkinson-Blanc. In the opening sequence, a young woman sits in a chair while unidentified persons in white suits and masks prepare to make a plaster casting of her head. The images move in fast motion, skipping through time so that we can watch her face be gradually covered by white goo and swaths of gauze. In the second section, the woman appears to wake up in an enclosure of plastic curtains surrounded by darkness. Is it an expression of her state as she sits speechless and unable to move under the plaster? An apparition appears on a nearby television monitor. Elsewhere, what look to be identical twins watch her intently with without expression as they devour the Eucharist. A second pair of women in gothic make up and wigs lurk with a more menacing air; one of them, who appears for all intents and purposes to be the paralyzed woman’s double, traces lines on the her neck with a pair of scissors and consumes green gelatin from a chalice on which a fly is engraved. A fifth female penetrates the curtain and begins to apply make-up to the hapless woman’s lips. In the third and final segment, there is another awakening inside the plastic
enclosure; this time it’s that of the woman’s death mask. The casting opens a pair of paper eyes that begin to focus on its surroundings: a paper fish, a mirror. Suddenly we hear a door open and close. Who leaves? Who is left behind? Is there a resurrection? A transformation? A death? All three? According to Wilkinson-Blanc, The Head depicts
a state of sensory deprivation that sets off an exploration of the fluid nature of identity and perception.
ARAN WILKINSON-BLANC
Aran Wilkinson-Blanc is a Calgary based photographer, filmmaker and animator who embraces and works with a variety of formats and media to achieve his creative goals. The Head is the second in an ongoing series of shorts that explore, with increasing complexity, the technical potential of digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras in the making of films.
