Negin Sharifzadeh
Even Gray Feels Blue; (2012); TRT: 8.18 is in Show 12 Twilight Mindset
Story of a Curse #1; (2014); TRT: 4.49 is in Show 21 Mother’s Day
The way I see it, art generates culture, and culture brings forth new social behaviors, diverse perspectives and change, hopefully for better! The sharing of different perspectives is itself a form of change, since it changes the way the viewer sees the world. The echoes of the individual move into collective realities; and sorrow can become social malaise.
Film is a way of storytelling. Since human’s existence on this planet, storytelling has been one of the very first and most powerful mediums since our hunting and gathering days, for educating our kids, building cultural values, political assembly, you name it!
I think we can find the roots of language itself in our urge to tell stories.
My film avoids the structure of story and narrative, built instead as a musical composition, creating an ambiguous psychic space for the viewer to enter. It is a natural evolution of my sculptural and performance practices; translating the most intimate and deeply personal emotions into their aesthetic essences. The process of stop motion animation is suited to my venture. The frame is shaped as much by my emotional state as it is technique and planning. My films deal with the intersection of the individual body and emotion with broader socio-economic realities.
On Even Gray Feels Blue, I had the wonderful experience of collaborating with the amazing musician and composer, Negar Bouban, whose music serves as the spine for the film. We worked through Skype, as she was in Tehran most of the time I was making the film. She had come up with the composition of the song based on the lyrics of the poem, and I used the same lyrics to create the visual language. So my animation was made very much in dialogue with her music, rather than the music serving as a score to the animation. As if our mediums of expressions were communicating through the lyrics of the poem we had in common!
