MIRA LINA SIMON
REMINISCENCE
A FILM BY CARLA MARIA
Don’t try to understand everything. Give life space.
The constant analysis of ourselves is a fortress of self-destruction.
I am trying to feel, to listen, to see the vibrations of this world.
Everything we have been building, everything that we dreamed of, all of
that will disappear.
Our fierce building of edifices, evocations of our power,
of our ascendancy.
The architecture of a ridiculous world, the human hunger for grandeur
deprives us of the only real connection we have ever had:
our link to nature.
I am trapped in boxes without sky, no grass to touch, without the ability
to feel the wind on my skin nor the warmth of the sun.
Our buildings, these gravestones.
I always knew it. It was virtually erased from my body, from my memory:
I am a part of nature. The remembrance of pain, the day I was separated
from her.
The link brutally cut from my ancestors, still returns to my feelings,
appearing suddenly of an undefinable malaise of an intense violence.
I am mad at the one, the whole of all, without being able to understand
anything, I am going through this suffering, the one that I was snatched
away from my unique landmark.
Aches, pains, deep wounds, the feeling of profound injustice,
that noting can retrieve or even alleviate.
The remembrance of the one, the whole of all, to be one, not to destroy
what built us, not to destroy what gives us everything we need.
Something is carrying me, guiding me, this common energy to recover
the vestiges of what is inside me.
I made the choice to listen, each and everyone of us can make this
choice.
By a lack of compassion, by an absence of empathy, by letting the fears
overcome us, we are closing our eyes and our hearts.
It is harrowing to listen to the earth dying, to be able to see clearly
mans slaughtering each other for egoistical and opportunistic gains
from a small few.
It is harrowing to feel the distress of the animals staring at their vital
spaces curtailed to oblivion.
I am listening because I am not afraid.
Transcending.
I surrender my inner conflict, the idea of society, religion, politics.
I am listening to who I am: what I have always been.
The energy, it is them, it is us, it is the one, the whole of all.
Solitude does not exist, the screams resonate ad infinitum.
Two forces are coming to life in me, I am the man and the woman, I experience in me the puissance
of mending. I knew it, I always knew, no more differences, no more fears, just a state of awareness.
In this state of awareness, it is impossible not to feel the despair of a world dying.
It is impossible to say, the world has such physical limits.
Infinite, the universe is what describes my relationship to the world.
The Reminiscence has no beginning, has no end, it is like a profound sound, a familiar tone which
overwhelms us entirely with its resonance and echoes the universality of our essence.
SYNOPSIS
Plato’s theory about Reminiscence is the essence of this film. Our soul was bathed in absolute knowledge before
the incarnation in what we call « our body », the soul was living surrounded by pure ideas and the truth.
During the incarnation process the soul forgets everything and it emerges again to remember everything that it
already knew.
In Reminiscence, Mira will experiment with the remembrance of the soul through her own history.
CARLA MARIA
STATEMENT OF INTENT
I never wanted to make a film; photography was more appealing to me
than moving images. A deep break in my life, the rejection of my old ways
of living, all of this guided me to the idea of creating a vision into
movements.
The idea of Reminiscence was there from the start. Since moving to
Germany my everyday life has been paced by all this remembrance.
I see Reminiscence more like a manifesto, a proposal, a way of seeing
things. We don’t really tell a story here; there is no end and no beginning. We are experimenting with a part of Mira’s life; we are escorting her
during a minuscule part of her path toward knowledge.
At the start of the creative process there was Mira, like a landmark and
then the different scenes materialized clearly. The performers represent
the energy, the absolute knowledge and the «scenery» the fundamental
part of Reminiscence. The architecture, the concrete, the forest, the
sea, the factories: those places are at the same time symbolic of the
content of the film but they also refer to our everyday life. I show how
those places permeate us and how sometimes they transform us, how
they transcend us. The memories of the places.
The performers are wearing a fine fabric which evokes the transformation they went through with recognition and remembrance.
The sound design in Reminiscence has a central place, the directly
recorded sounds are connected to sounds, providing audio for objects
that are the extensions of the film ideas. The sound of shells creates a melody, the magnetic fields push through
the idea of the multidimensionality of space.
Usually inaudible sounds are strongly amplified, the percussions are impacts on a body.
The association of asteroid sounds with whale song in one film contributes to widening the
physical and pragmatic side of sound design. The sound is another dimension for the film.
I had to make this film, to pass this voice over and express the malaise that I am feeling on an
everyday basis, there is nothing negative here, quite the reverse. To me Reminiscence is the
opening of all the possibilities, the abolition of all boundaries, the birth of a vocation. It is for
the necessity of understanding.
MIRA LINA SIMON
INTERVIEW
You never played in a film, what made you accept to play in Reminiscence?
For me playing in Reminiscence was always something very natural. When
Carla asked me, I had the feeling that my decision was already made, that I
did not have to decide, it was clear, like I knew it before.
Were you scared?
I was not afraid to play in the film. I trusted Carla and myself. I was looking
forward to trying something new, something that I never did before. It was
like going for a new adventure, discovering and diving in to the world of cinema, I was very curious.
I was not afraid of the image I could show of myself, not afraid of the
possible criticism. I was not bothered that the people would not like me as
an actress because above all else I’m a dance producer. This fact gave me
a freedom and a frame, a space of self-confidence.
There were some moments of fear during the shooting. For example, I had
some apprehension of jumping in the Spree because a few people around
me were worried about me.
The role was written for you, « the main character » has your name,
did you have the feeling that you did not compose a role?
It is a hard question. On the one hand yes on the other no. When
Carla gave me the script, I read it and I thought: this Mira it’s me,
with my feelings, my thoughts. But it was only a part of me and I
had to show only this part to the camera. The fact that there was a
camera and that we were shooting with unknown people, created in
me the feeling that I was going out of my own life, acting was never
a part of my everyday life before.
In the film, there are also scenes where I felt a discrepancy between me and the character of Mira. For example, when I was on the
boat, struggling with the world, life, society in which we live, I realized, that I would not have made the same choice as the character
of the film.
Reminiscence was made without dialogues, can you tell us more
about the shooting:
Language is something very sensitive for me. With Carla, we talked
a lot during the writing process and the communication between us
decreased gradually during the shooting.
Our core team was composed of Carla, Daniel, Marvin and I. There
were also people helping on certain scenes as well as dancers but
we were mostly alone, it was a familial team and very fusional.
For most of the scenes we did not do any rehearsals. There were
lots of locations I did not know before and when we arrived at the
shooting spaces, I was trying to tame and familiarize myself with
the locations. Then Carla explained the scenes to me and we made
them. Very often it was only one take. For me it was quite enjoyable
and I was quite surprised that things went that fast.
Did you find some scenes harder to shoot than others?
Of course, some scenes were harder than others. The most difficult
one was on the boat, it was the scene we made first. It was the
hardest one because I had a lot of apprehensions to jump in the
Spree, in the dark, polluted water full of chemicals. The water was
cloudy and we could not see anything. On top of that it was cold,
very cold. It was in October, it was only ten degrees outside and I
was almost naked in my costume. It was also psychologically the
most demanding scene where I had to show my feelings, where I
had to fight. A fight against the cold, a fight against the boat and an
inner fight because I had to overcome my fears.
In what state of mind were you during the shooting?
It was very varied. There were some days of shooting where I was
feeling calm, some other days I was confused, some days I had less
trust and I could also feel tensions. But when I was in front of the
camera I would forget everything and I felt good, I felt here, present,
alive.
ARTISTIC LIST
MIRA LINA SIMON
MAX MORS
TECHNICAL LIST
Director & Screenplay
Director of Photography
Camera
Music and sound design
Editing
CARLA MARIA
CARLA MARIA
DANIEL MCMAHON
MARVIN MCMAHON
DANIEL MCMAHON