Blessed Are Those Who Grieve

We consider ourselves as three filmmakers. Even though we committed to different tasks, we also shared most processes of weaving this film together. It’s a collective work and a tight collaboration between ourselves in different roles and beyond them. Dismissing strict labor divisions and hierarchies allowed us to complement our skills and creativity. We aimed to work within a small crew, making space for vulnerabilities and shared care work - which is truly needed working on something so emotional, triggering, and painful as grief.

Zora:

"For the last year, grief has lived with me as a bulky shadow. Watching the brutal genocide of palestinians daily on my phone and mourning the loss of a dear friend, I figured I didn’t know how to grieve. I got curious. My admiration for 3D-creatures, especially those considered dark and ugly, queer (science) fiction, as well as my ongoing review of literature on post-humanism inspired me to think of a creature of grief living inside each of us - that can mingle with and be re-shaped by others. I was thrilled to auto-ethnographically investigate expressions and performances of grief through our bodies and to apply our findings to the digital embodiment.

I want someone to have an experience of grief watching the movie, to not move alone in the dark, to feel held. If it’s not too much to ask, I wish to evoke a discussion about how we can share and connect our grief collectively."

Evgenia:

"In my life, I have learned to reject the feeling of grief and switch my attention to something else as fast as possible. However, I know it is there, that darkness, numbness at the end of the swirl… which makes you breathless and paralysed. As a dancer and performer, I became interested in embodying this state, immersing myself in that dangerous moment until it took over and the 'fiction of performance' became the 'reality of the moment', tracing the inner visions it created. As a filmmaker, I wanted to transfer the 'surreality' of grief through images of textures and expressivity of the bodies entangled in the landscape."

Kayu:

"In the beginning were not the words, but body movement. When I was rolling on the floor with Evgenia and Zora during the body sessions, I found something inside me unlocked. For a very long time, I have been disassociated with my own body. But at that moment, I could feel the presence of my throat and my mother tongue, Cantonese, was spilled on the floor. How does one talk about a social movement that is prohibited to be mentioned in her own home town? When I talk about something extremely personal, is it a way to resonate with others, or did I put a barrier from others who haven’t gone through the same events? In the film, the narrator never signified what exactly the trauma was, but the silence is loud. It invites imagination, a broader empathy that is only possible by understanding it beyond languages and filling in your own sorrow."