The film Margalith (2007) by interdisciplinary artist Aya Ben Ron combines video with 2D computer animation. The movie is made in one unbroken sequence that simulates the continuity of the dual gaze- that of the viewer and that of the movies main character, a flower-girl figure. This character is at first barely visible, a waif searching through her home for tracks, memories of an event that took place or that might take place in what appears to be a house abandoned in haste. The house is both familiar and strange, a thing of intensely private personal history but also a space rooted in the collective socio-political context. The figure herself is a combination of photography and animation- a puppet doll of destiny or the personification of the introspective soul. The three central animation sections suspend the flow, they interrupt the steady gaze and confuse the plot, shifting from past to present to future: In the children’s scene one sees them gathered in the pooling light of a memorial candle, watching a torrent of flowers fall from the sky as monotone syllables sound in the background- a echo of dread from the past. The present is embodied in an old record player that begins to play, suddenly quickening in speed. For a split second only it is transformed into a frightening machine and its sound leads us to the beating heart of the girl flailing violently against her knees, trying frantically to elicit a response to feel some sign of life. The animation scene of a bird bringing her chicks a string of pearls or plucking it away from them, and its subsequent fall to the floor as it breaks and the pearls scatter everywhere, marks the impending surrender of the doll character. Through this phantasmagoria of animation the artist exposes the hidden layers of existence and thus shifts the perspective of the both the character and the viewer.
The film was produced with the support of the Jehoshua Rabinowitz Tel Aviv Foundation for the Arts.
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