“Woman Without Mandolin shows us the portrait of a woman – a portrait in motion. A face and a body cut and divided by time – folded in time and by time. This elaborate and poetic film by Fabiano Mixo is not just inspired by cubist painting and its masters, it is rather an updating of it by the possibilities offered by audio-visuality, by montage, that constantly fragments and creates new proportions for the duration of a film.
Mixo’s film demonstrates that he has a clear notion of the nature of cinematic art, of its possibility to rethink and redevelop cubism through motion and time. He also establishes a view of humans for which one perspective alone cannot be appropriate and through which humans constantly show themselves whilst remaining hidden. Thanks to this method and the intense presence of its actress Miriam Goldschmidt, Mixo’s film raises the very fundamental question of the perception and representation of others.”
“Woman without mandolin presents, right from the start, two main references. On the one hand, the portrait-film subgenre, ironically announced by the frontal framing of the woman, like on a driver’s license photo. On the other hand, the Cubist techniques indicated by the title – a parody on the paintings by Braque and Picasso – and by the oeuvre’s formal structure. The critical working of such elements through digital technology presents powerful reflections on a certain Western notion of visuality, inseparable from a variety of sexual, technological, and ethnical attributes. Over the remains of a fragmented face, only singing will be able to restore the irreconcilable manifestations of culture and history.”
By Luís Felipe Flores (Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival)
“A cubist-like deconstruction of artist Miriam Goldschmidt’s portrait, Woman without Mandolin, touches both the black art’s influence in the construction of the European modernism and the conceptual art’s attempts of desacralizing the image of the creator-artist. “
NexT International Film Festival – AVANT-GARDE PROGRAM