Experiencing Interruptions?

The Beating of a Loving Heart

An experimental film shot during the Covid-19 'stay at home' order in New York, April/May, 2019. Using found audio and my own archive footage It explores the effects of isolation on mental health.

  • Neville Elder
    Director
  • Neville Elder
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    May 14, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    HDV
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Hunter College
Director Biography - Neville Elder

Neville Elder started working as a news photographer in the 1990's in London. He moved to New York in 2001, where he continued to freelance as a photographer and writer. In 2010 he started to produce and direct music videos and digital content. Currently Neville enrolled in the Integrated Media Arts MFA program at Hunter College in New York City.

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Director Statement

Within the confusion of the first few weeks of lock-down, all film projects I had been working on were suspended. as requested I shut myself away in my Brooklyn apartment and established a strange normalcy.

I began shooting my apartment and recording the silence within. I shot the blank squares of windows and listened to life outside. And with nothing else to do, I took a deep dive into my archive and I began to negotiate with my isolation.

In this film, I descend into the movies of my memory projected through the ratio of film and across the plane of my imagination. I augment newly recorded video of my voluntary internment with found audio and Rev. Richard Wurmbrand's testimony of his imprisonment for establishing an underground church in Communist Romania. I was moved by his faith. As his isolation and torture continued, he despaired his memory of a common prayer dissolved into hallucination, until he was left with nothing but his heartbeat, which he offered as a single, repeating prayer.