Between Prophecy and Memory [2025]

COMING SOON

DIRECTORS STATEMENT

In May of 2025, over the span of three days I secluded myself in a small cabin perched above an untouched valley in Aguanga, California. There, I watched the light as it passed over me and through me. I made an attempt to “paint” with my digital cinema camera–frames which have not existed in my mind before. These frames float between more realistic depictions of the world while others venture into the impressionistic. 50 shots make up Between Prophecy and Memory, one for each year that I’ve been gifted by the cosmos to exist in this corner of space and time. As such, all the textures of life are contained in this film: longing, grappling, colors fading and emerging again, and finally, a return to silence. I approached each shot as a painter might, treating the screen as a blank canvas. Rather than producing images which act as a stand-in for another reality (i.e. an image of an apple is not a real apple), I wanted each moment of the film to exist fully on its own terms–to be a reality in itself. Finally, after auditioning many soundtracks, I ultimately chose silence—freeing the film from the associations that sound inevitably brings, and allowing the images to exist on their own, without mediation.

-Patrick Shen