For a long time during my studies at the University of East London I had been under the supervision of avant-garde filmmaker Professor John Smith. He encouraged me to work with a 16mm camera and to experiment with actuality and abstraction, and he has had a big influence on my formation as a filmmaker.
"Natalia Jezova's short films fascinated by the immersive power of narrative scenarios that blur the lines between imagination, reality and memory. She subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, her meticulously crafted films playfully explore the multifaceted language of cinema."
"Natalia Jezova's short films fascinated by the immersive power of narrative scenarios that blur the lines between imagination, reality and memory. She subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, her meticulously crafted films playfully explore the multifaceted language of cinema."
JUST COFFEE
JUST COFFEE
2022, HD video, 5 min, colour, sound.
The short film with so trivial title touches important themes of our life as relationships, feelings and communication.
I deployed strategies such as metaphor and symbolism to ruminate on how our mind remains divided between memory and the present, between reality and dreams. Metaphorical language creates a deeper meaning and makes an impression on a subliminal level. It evokes the viewer’s emotional response and awakens their intellectual engagement with the film. Symbolic details allow the spectator to perceive a new dimension of the subject and read the messages that I aimed to embed in the film.
The sound in the film serves as an editing framework, which shapes the mental transitions between the sequences of the story.
2022, HD video, 5 min, colour, sound.
The short film with so trivial title touches important themes of our life as relationships, feelings and communication.
I deployed strategies such as metaphor and symbolism to ruminate on how our mind remains divided between memory and the present, between reality and dreams. Metaphorical language creates a deeper meaning and makes an impression on a subliminal level. It evokes the viewer’s emotional response and awakens their intellectual engagement with the film. Symbolic details allow the spectator to perceive a new dimension of the subject and read the messages that I aimed to embed in the film.
The sound in the film serves as an editing framework, which shapes the mental transitions between the sequences of the story.
A POSERIORI
A POSTRRIORI
2023, HD video, 3min. colour, sound
A Posteriori (Latin, ‘from the later’) - knowledge derived from experience (Encyclopaedia Britannica/philosophy).
The film delves into some complex themes: the mystery of creation; the line between God and man; the global crisis of values, faith and religion; power and hypocrisy; the church mired in scandals and contradictions.
The above concepts are examined in this three minutes film. Diverse visual styles have been intertwined, separate shots are linked together not by their literal continuity in reality but by symbolic association - as metaphors. This provides an opportunity to not only show different conclusions on the screen, but to also create symbolic meanings and metaphors that go outside the context of the film. The playful representation of existential topics invites the viewer to draw from their own memory and emotional recognition, stimulating their intellectual reflexivity and perception. It allows for the process of co-creation by inviting the spectator’s imagination to build a unique interpretation.
2023, HD video, 3min. colour, sound
A Posteriori (Latin, ‘from the later’) - knowledge derived from experience (Encyclopaedia Britannica/philosophy).
The film delves into some complex themes: the mystery of creation; the line between God and man; the global crisis of values, faith and religion; power and hypocrisy; the church mired in scandals and contradictions.
The above concepts are examined in this three minutes film. Diverse visual styles have been intertwined, separate shots are linked together not by their literal continuity in reality but by symbolic association - as metaphors. This provides an opportunity to not only show different conclusions on the screen, but to also create symbolic meanings and metaphors that go outside the context of the film. The playful representation of existential topics invites the viewer to draw from their own memory and emotional recognition, stimulating their intellectual reflexivity and perception. It allows for the process of co-creation by inviting the spectator’s imagination to build a unique interpretation.
MASSIF
MASSIF
HD video, 5min, B&W, sound
The short film Massif was created as a reaction to my earlier film 1159, in which I explored traumatic memories of my family experience during WWII and the Holocaust in Lithuania through concepts of “post memory” and “silenced history”. In the 1159 landscape images, devoid of people, conveyed the violent and traumatic consequences through the use of sound - the sound filled with the presence of people is clearly in contradiction to the peaceful landscape.
For Massif, the pianist and composer Louis Durra was inspired to create a new soundtrack to accompany the visual footage from 1159, which brought a new “reading” and a hope for “deep wounds healing”.
The film consists of long takes, where we see only the landscape devoid of the presence of human life. Applying the use of long takes makes it possible to feel the real flow of time within the film and gives viewers the opportunity to experience a more detailed visual exploration, one that increases their emotional involvement in the story. During long takes, viewers who are unfamiliar with the scene represented in the film can have enough time to “feel inside” the scene.
Between the long takes, Louis Durra decided to use a “shuttering effect”, perceiving this as “a resetting of the senses” - like pauses between sentences, a silence between phrases in music or the closing of one’s eyes. The effect awakes expectation, or even impatience – which is a very different effect to what is experienced from continuing to show footage or an image, or cutting to something else. Whether the transitions in and out of blackness are sudden or gradual, the timing seems to matter a lot here, as indeed it does everywhere - in art, in dialogue, in life.
"Natalia’s video evokes chilling events from the Holocaust, mostly through the soundtrack. The visuals show only the stillness of a forest, apparently empty - and have a compelling beauty. I was inspired to create new music to her visuals.
After attempts to work from the original narrative I focused on reacting purely to the visuals. What resulted was a piece based only on the stillness of the forest. Filtering crushed the piano sound into something less familiar." Louis Durra
http://louisdurra.com/
HD video, 5min, B&W, sound
The short film Massif was created as a reaction to my earlier film 1159, in which I explored traumatic memories of my family experience during WWII and the Holocaust in Lithuania through concepts of “post memory” and “silenced history”. In the 1159 landscape images, devoid of people, conveyed the violent and traumatic consequences through the use of sound - the sound filled with the presence of people is clearly in contradiction to the peaceful landscape.
For Massif, the pianist and composer Louis Durra was inspired to create a new soundtrack to accompany the visual footage from 1159, which brought a new “reading” and a hope for “deep wounds healing”.
The film consists of long takes, where we see only the landscape devoid of the presence of human life. Applying the use of long takes makes it possible to feel the real flow of time within the film and gives viewers the opportunity to experience a more detailed visual exploration, one that increases their emotional involvement in the story. During long takes, viewers who are unfamiliar with the scene represented in the film can have enough time to “feel inside” the scene.
Between the long takes, Louis Durra decided to use a “shuttering effect”, perceiving this as “a resetting of the senses” - like pauses between sentences, a silence between phrases in music or the closing of one’s eyes. The effect awakes expectation, or even impatience – which is a very different effect to what is experienced from continuing to show footage or an image, or cutting to something else. Whether the transitions in and out of blackness are sudden or gradual, the timing seems to matter a lot here, as indeed it does everywhere - in art, in dialogue, in life.
"Natalia’s video evokes chilling events from the Holocaust, mostly through the soundtrack. The visuals show only the stillness of a forest, apparently empty - and have a compelling beauty. I was inspired to create new music to her visuals.
After attempts to work from the original narrative I focused on reacting purely to the visuals. What resulted was a piece based only on the stillness of the forest. Filtering crushed the piano sound into something less familiar." Louis Durra
http://louisdurra.com/
THE SWALLOW
The Swallow
HD Video, 6min, B&W, sound
During an art residency in the remote village of Psarades in Northern Greece I was part of a group of artists who visited places most affected by the Civil War in Greece. Places where life suddenly stopped...
In the film The Swallow I explored themes of place, trauma and the displacement of the Macedonian diaspora in Northern Greece. I decided to include the story about a revived swallow that we had seen in the abandoned school in Psarades village.
As always, in my art practice I put a big emphasis on the symbolic meaning of things. Swallows are traditionally among the most beloved and honoured birds in culture and a common belief was that swallows were birds “blessed” to carry spirits. Following my research on folklore, I discovered that “dead children return as swallows in spring to console their parents”(Porter & Russell, 1978, p. 188). In one scene in my film the swallows play a central metaphorical role and the significance of the scene symbolises the souls of departed children who are searching in space and time for a way to return home.
HD Video, 6min, B&W, sound
During an art residency in the remote village of Psarades in Northern Greece I was part of a group of artists who visited places most affected by the Civil War in Greece. Places where life suddenly stopped...
In the film The Swallow I explored themes of place, trauma and the displacement of the Macedonian diaspora in Northern Greece. I decided to include the story about a revived swallow that we had seen in the abandoned school in Psarades village.
As always, in my art practice I put a big emphasis on the symbolic meaning of things. Swallows are traditionally among the most beloved and honoured birds in culture and a common belief was that swallows were birds “blessed” to carry spirits. Following my research on folklore, I discovered that “dead children return as swallows in spring to console their parents”(Porter & Russell, 1978, p. 188). In one scene in my film the swallows play a central metaphorical role and the significance of the scene symbolises the souls of departed children who are searching in space and time for a way to return home.