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Yes These Eyes are the Windows

Yes, These Eyes are the Windows 2015, 18 min HD video for projection Voice over Tom Brooke
In 2012 a Chinese businessman bought a dilapidated house in South London unseen in auction. The house in Brixton has a ‘blue plaque’ as one of the most famous artists in history, Vincent van Gogh lodged here for a year in 1873.

Olde Wolbers was fascinated by this idolatry action and the way ‘blue plaques’ anthropomorphize bricks into unreliable biographers of historic figures.

In her latest film Yes These Eyes are the Windows, a fictional narrative unfolds following the mythologizing of van Gogh and the increasingly strong grip that his ghostly presence took on the destiny of the humble house and its owners.

The film’s voice over is told through the point of view of the house itself and is filmed in both the decaying building and in model sets that the artist created in her studio. Organic and talkative, this storyteller built of bricks and wood conducts us into its universe of fluid outlines. ‘Saskia Olde Wolbers’ visual creations, with their aqueous consistency and feverish atmosphere, weave themselves into a speculative documentary composition.’
The film is available with French subtitles

  • saskia olde wolbers
    Director
  • saskia olde wolbers
    Writer
  • Artangel
    Producer
  • Tom Brooke
    Key Cast
  • Eben Bolter
    director of photography
  • Lu Kemp
    dramaturge
  • Daniel Pemberton
    music score
  • Tom Sedgwick
    Sound
  • David Panos
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    19 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 24, 2015
  • Production Budget:
    30,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    HD Blackmagic
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles, France
    Arles
    France
    June 10, 2016
  • IDFA (Nov 2015) Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Amsterdam
    Netherlands
    November 22, 2015
    dutch premiere
  • kino der Kunst (Apr 2015)
    munich
    Germany
    April 15, 2015
    world premiere
  • seattle film festival (Apr 2015) Seattle
    Seattle
    United States
    April 22, 2015
    North american premiere
  • Freud museum London (Jul 2015)
    London
    United Kingdom
    July 22, 2015
Distribution Information
  • maureen paley
    Country: United Kingdom
    Rights: Ship
Director Biography - saskia olde wolbers

Saskia Olde Wolbers (Dutch) lives and works in London.

Since the mid-1990s Saskia Olde Wolbers has been working with video and has shown extensively in UK and international museums, galleries, festivals and public spaces.

Olde Wolbers’s short narrative videos combine carefully crafted fictional scripts with visuals that reveal other-worldly environments. Off-screen narrators address the fluidity of fact through biographies relating to notions of translation, neurosis and verisimilitude with an eye for wit and the absurd.

Referencing computer-generated imagery, her liquid visuals are entirely analogue, shot in real-time in model sets. Skeletal objects, architecture and living forms are given a “skin” when dipped in paint and submerged underwater. Materials are animated through this unpredictable confrontation of oil and water and become dripping, oozing and undulating matter oscillating between representation and abstraction. These recordings of sculptural and chemical lo-fi processes subvert the truth-telling qualities of filming reality.

Her videos incorporate soundtracks composed by Daniel Pemberton, who is well known for creating an inventive hybrid of musical media – from electronic to orchestral – throughout his work in film and television. In the process of editing the music, scripts and visuals together, and by presenting the finished works on a loop, Olde Wolbers creates a circular time structure that utilises an unfamiliar and new cinematic space.

Her most recent work is a video that sprang from her site-specific audio installation commissioned by Artangel in London, 2014. In Yes, these Eyes are the Windows, Olde Wolbers alternates her unique visuals for the first time with footage shot on location with actors.

Olde Wolbers has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the London Artists’ Film and Video Award, 2007; the Beck's Futures Award, 2004; the Baloise Prize, 2003; the Charlotte Kohler Award, 2002; the Prix de Rome Film and Video, 2001.

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