Around the Bend

"The stirring in our hearts when watching the star-studded sky is
something no language can declare" - Heschel

When one gazes up at the heavens, or down into the dark moonlit sea, he is overcome by an inarticulable awe that defies the intellect. So too the medium of cinema conveys what no language can declare. It is perhaps the only art form that can "show" us the ineffable. The movie's job is not to create work that "teaches" or "preaches", but rather a work that has an "unutterable truth", something that can only be expressed through the moving image.

When I was nine my grandfather who was a respected Rabbi died. Although I was very young, I felt very close to him. He was a larger-than-life figure, who was held in great esteem by the Orthodox Jewish community. As I close my eyes I can still see him, sitting by his wooden desk in the living room, hunched over a yellowing Talmud. I could see his lightning-blue eyes glancing at me from behind his spectacles, and I could hear his hearty chuckle. After the funeral, I wrote a series of letters to him, opened the window, and cast them off into the sky. I remember deep down questioning whether they’d actually reach him. A part of me doubted it, a part of me even doubted that he existed any more at all. But a small part of me believed he was out there, that wind would come and carry my letters through the stratosphere, past the milky way, and into ''the room around the bend''.

''Around the Bend'' is about people who vanish, who become intangible, and yet in our heart of hearts we believe they’re still out there somewhere… floating across the deep cosmic void. This is something I believe cannot be captured through any other art form. Something only the camera can do, only the camera can gaze directly into the abyss and photograph the face of God.

I conclude with the words of my master Ingmar, who needs no introduction, and who encapsulated the above perfectly in his memoir The Magic Lantern: “Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the twilight rooms of our souls. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness. At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of the magic of my childhood.”