Cinema and Visual Pleasure

The film is constructed upon a short loop, extracted from an old 8mm burlesque film depicting a belly dancer moving against a black background. Her dance consists of little more than a series of languid, circular gestures. Her hips, elbows, wrists and stomach perpetuate endless circles each within their own orbits of motion. The image is black and white, scratched and grainy, and further complicated by the orange bubbles of nitrate decay that speckle the emulsion’s surface. The loop is expanded across the film’s duration through repetition and multiple superimpositions. The film is an exercise in the plastic properties of those devices available to film: light, speed and duration.