Orison (2014)
short experimental fiction
s16, b&w
Black-and-white meditation on the tension between scientific knowledge and religious belief.
A young scientist, man of reason, searches for his childhood feelings, his forgotten ability to believe, when his rabbi father passes away.
Written and Directed by: Gina Haraszti
Cast: Samuel Burd
It is a melancholic film which captures some kind of ephemeral and intangible poetry about the way we just disappear from this world
The film explores the tension surrounding the correspondences between religious belief and scientific knowledge by focusing on the memories of loss and its emotional effects. It is visually influenced by the concept of wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy, which originates in the Japanese tea ceremony and its tools. Based on Buddhist notions, there is no bad or good, beautiful or ugly, they only exist in our preconceptions. Nothing lasts forever, and everything is in the state of either appearing or disappearing. The images capture imperfect objects and ephemeral moments, they draw our attention to a dead fly caught up in a spider’s web as a way to embrace our own mortality and unimportance in this universe and that of our loved ones too.
This film is delicate and ephemeral piece about the beautiful imperfection of life and its heartbreaking puniness in the universe and all the hope which shapes a God.