if you seek amy2024 | Turkey & UK | 16mm & 35mm film transferred to video | 2 minutes
Subjecting recognisable faces to poor image-making processes, the film utilises 2000s pop music videos, particularly moments in which the singers are looking directly at the camera. Drawing on Vertical Roll (1972) by Joan Jonas, the images roll out of the screen, torn and abstracted.
Sound by Yusuf Huysal.
World Premiere as part of Short & Mid Programme at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, NL (IFFR)
Onion City Experimental Film Festival / Is this thing on? / 3-6 April 2025, Chicago, US
Xposure Queer Film Festival / Shorts 4 / 30 May 2025, Berlin, DE
Leiden Shorts / International Competition 5: The Personal is Political / 1 & 3 June 2025, Leiden, NL
video installation at vitruta / 7 June 2025, London, UK
"The seductive gazes with which Fergie, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé and Katy Perry once pierced the camera, reach us through a whirlwind of reproduction and deformation. Their images deconstructed so far that halftone dots become visible, their iconic Y2K pop hits collapsed into faintly recognisable reverberations. Using 16 and 35mm film, vinyl stickers, photograms and lace, Ela Kazdal dissects the pop star as media object, tracing its allure through layers of distortion and decay.”
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Loes van Keulen, IFFR 2025
A two-minute whirlwind of halftone dots, photograms, vinyl stickers and lace, the film deconstructs iconic pop stardom—into faint, flickering reverberations.
- Gigi Surel, Teaspoon Projects, 2025
Combining 16mm and 35mm film, vinyl stickers, photograms, and lace, the filmmaker prints a strange remix of 2000s music videos that threaten to overtake their subjects by filmstrip a la Tscherkassky’s seminal Outer Space (1999).
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- Onion City Experimental Film Festival, 2025