Muse

This is my senior capstone film from Pratt Institute! When first developing my inspirations for this film, my professor suggested I research John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. The following quote is one from the book, and I feel it applies to the themes and feelings I am trying to convey in my film: “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you(r) own pleasure”. This film was also inspired by the figures depicted in Édouard Manet’s painting "Luncheon on the Grass". I found it interesting that historically this painting was rejected by salons for the visual parallels of nude women to clothed, bourgeois men. Additionally, the lack of mythological or allegorical context as justification for depicting a nude woman shocked many viewers during that time. This film is also inspired by my personal relationship with being a woman, femininity, and the feelings I have felt sometimes about it.

Ultimately, I wanted to create space for consideration about the experience of being female. It is encouraged to be interpreted as personally or as generally as possible, and visually I intended the film to accompany the emotions conveyed through the animation. I really liked thinking of this film as a “living drawing”. This was the main reasoning behind animating it with pencil on paper. Stylistically, I was inspired by the stark contrast in many of Manet’s realism paintings, as well as old doodles I used to draw in my school notebooks as a kid.