My Own Obsession

“My Own Obsession” is a film interested in the implications of identity and the archeology of those mental layers that represent our identities. It is a journey through the identity of an Armenian-Canadian woman during a specific period, which is documented through interviews with various individuals about their encounters and experiences with the protagonist. The line between documentary and fiction is blurred. The cinematic impact unfolds into poetic visual metaphors, which weave themselves throughout the film. It is a film which explores the relationship of the viewer to the film. An unknown archivist/filmmaker structures the cinematic experience through the guise of a traditional documentary. The interviews with various characters, usually the staple of a traditional documentary, is consciously subverted to confront issues of style and content in relation to the discourse which occurs between the audience and the artistic product; the conventions of documentary are inverted in an ouroboros-like cycle where the film documents as much its own creation and slips between various cinematic codes. The stories that are presented are diverse and only slowly fray away the many veils, which the protagonist has draped herself under. She continuously seduces each character while revealing frustration at her own failed attempt at reconstructing new self-generated identities. The knowledge, which the auxiliary figures posses about the protagonist, is one only of surfaces and illusions, their personalities and experiences become indistinguishable aesthetically, style and content are one and recite simultaneous fictions and realities. They both cloud and clarify the narrative. Notions of foreground and background assimilate themselves into a neutral space, which exemplifies importance only through aesthetic impact, whether auditory or visual. The protagonist is a photographer whose only subject is herself and each pose gazes straight at the viewer/camera. She exists in an egocentric universe, ruled by Narcissus. “My Own Obsession” documents the protagonists’ pathology through her interactions with others and her own images. The cinematic tone chosen for this film is one of psychological discomfort. It is as if the film is being constructed and projected as much in the minds of characters and actors as in the minds of the audience. It is in the relentless ambiguity of the film, which stitches together its elegantly flowering narrative of poetic moments, shots and metaphors. Is the audience privy to the personal? The cinematic forum manufactured by the film both distances the viewer form its stark aggressive aesthetics, but invites curiosity into the friction between each persona.