Abstract

Warm and fragile abstraction. Filmic and musical variations on a round form.
Expressionist film poem in which image and sound are two separate worlds, but become a unity thanks to their round forms.1 

I remember standing in the darkroom, wiping the enlarger clean, when suddenly its lamp revealed a perfect circle. As I turned the focus knob, the circle shifted—growing, shrinking, endlessly back and forth. With my Bolex I captured this play on 16mm film. Later, I tinted the strips in four shades: blue, green, yellow, and red.

Solarisation brought unexpected effects: objects shifting in motion and color, appearing as accidental revelations. Chance itself became a co-creator, evoking the sense of a spiritual force. The circular forms embody this life force in its different phases.

As Wassily Kandinsky once said: “The circle is perhaps the most modest form, yet it imposes itself with reckless force. Precise in its outline, yet infinitely variable in its appearances. At once stable and unstable, silent and resonant, and within its simple presence it carries a tension that contains countless other tensions.”2 

The sound weaves itself into this image: a voice, drops of water falling into a bowl, a child whistling, a singing wineglass. Through repetition, sounds themselves become circular forms, entering the unconscious and building a bridge between the physical and the metaphysical.

The eyes search.
The ears find.

Specifications

language: no dialoque
running time: 6 minuten
premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam 1999
director: BarBara Hanlo
scenario: BarBara Hanlo
production: PEP
sales: PEP
camera: BarBara Hanlo
editor: Jan Wouter van Reijen
sound: BarBara Hanlo
festivals and screenings: International Filmfestival Rotterdam 1999 / several festival in Europe / Film Festival TIJD Amsterdam 2025