When I Close My Eyes I See Everything, 2023
a film by Alexandre Alagôa
A Sunday walk in a forest turns into a poetic journey on perception.
From perpetually fluid hand-held and improvised camera movements, to the use of rain, glass, plastics, leaves and dirt as lens filters, to a careless and sudden shift between long and quick shutter speeds, When I Close My Eyes evokes the world of entoptic phenomena so inherent to our perceptual organism.
Establishing a continuous dialogue between physiological studies of the aural and visual fields with the territory of experimental cinema, Alagôa explores how certain precise and nuanced stimulations of the human sensory receptors can have an immediate impact on the auto-reflexive nature of its whole nervous system, piercing it, destabilizing it, ripping it to shreds, breaking its gravitational point.
The result is displayed through a universe of phosphenes, purkinje trees, after-images and other closed-eye imagery resembling a pilgrimage through infinite space, exploding stars, unhabited galaxies and erupting supernovas, so unveiling a whole original cosmology inside each and every single one of us.
festivals & exhibitions
2024, Cauldron Film Festival, Salt Lake City, USA
2024, Cinemateca del Ecuador: Light Matter, Ecuador
2024, Filmmakers’ Cooperative: New Year New Work Fest, USA
2024, Luxembourg Film Festival, Luxembourg
2024, Filmmakers’ Cooperative: Light Matter, New York, USA
2023, Festival Tous Courts, Aix-en-Provence, France
2023, Light Matter, Alfred University, New York, USA
2023, Mostra Strangloscope, Itajaí, Brazil
2023, Vistacurta, Viseu, Portugal
2023, Ibrida Film Festival, Forlì, Italy
2023, Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Bogotá, Colombia
2023, Bucharest Short Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania
2023, Light Matter, Kino Palais, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2023, Camara Escura, House of Haeg, Lisbon, Portugal
2023, Mientrastanto Cine, Facutad de Artes de Montevideo, Uruguay
2023, IndieLisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
about the author:
Alexandre Alagôa (1994) is an experimental filmmaker and electronic music producer working between Lisbon and Luxembourg.
Alagôa’s film and video work explores the mechanical, material and durational qualities of the audiovisual medium, and its immediate physical and kinetic impact on the viewer’s nervous system, often shattering the senses of vision and hearing into new sensible and obscure realms. Following a continuous research on conceptual art, the fluxus movement, and the structrural filmmaking approach, along with a constant curiosity on scientific issues on perception and psychology, Alagôa’s audiovisual pieces unfold into layered experiences often evoking optical illusions (such as the waterfall effect), studies on the physiology of the eye (such as phosphenes, after-images, purkinje trees and other entoptic phenomena) and synaesthetic sensations in order to destabilize, breakdown and (re)organize perceptual experience to its core elements, often inducing bodily and mental dispositions, at the same time leading the viewer to an awareness of their act of seeing and hearing.
technical specs:
Digital Video, 3:2, Colour, Stereo Sound, 13'30''
awards:
2024, Best of Fest Award for Excellence in Filmmaking, We Make Movies, Los Angeles
2022, Best International Film, Bogotá Experimental Film Fesitval, Colombia
distribution:
produced and distributed by turva
full film available upon request: turva.label@gmail.com