‘Where I’m From‘ is the kind of short film that is difficult to categorize, rather proposing an atypical sensory experience exceeding the strict perimeter of cinema. In a way, Sina Nazarian offers us what we might call an experimental project that borrows mechanisms of surrealist art to create an immersive visual and musical vertigo. Inspired by René Magritte’s conceptual painting to which the influences from Jung’s philosophy are added, the short film works according to that “illogical logic” of a fantasy interweaving concrete reality with dreamlike projections. As in any artistic manifestation with surrealist inflexions, especially when it descends, even at an almost imperceptible level, from Dali’s work, the project abounds in elements that can be the subject of psychoanalytical interpretations. Thus, a connoisseur may see in this apparently chaotic cinematic construction an attempt to hypostasize the shadow (the Jungian archetype) as a sort of triggering mechanism of the artistic impulse.
Art itself is, in fact, the central obsession of this experiment, seen both as a means of self-knowledge and as a social force that ultimately catalyses the encounter between two people, each dedicated to a different creative language. The two characters embody two typologies of the artist in full existential crisis but “possessed” by the feverish daemon of creation – he is a musician who tries to transgress the misery of his marginal existence through his songs; she is a visual artist who sees in her sculptures and paintings a form of facing fears as well as a form of dreamlike exploration of a compensating universe. In the end, the two characters seem to merge into a single identity, like a bicephalic, androgynous being who accesses an elevated level of knowledge.
Yin and yang, animus and anima, masculine and feminine, all melt into this experimental film designed like a harmonious dialogue between music and painting. From this perspective, Sina Nazarian finds his sources of inspiration not only in surrealism, folk, reggae, or indie music but also in the aesthetics of the music video through which he can balance these two complementary artistic discourses. Far from being a project that will be enjoyed by conventional viewers looking for a concrete plot, ‘Where I’m From’ is nevertheless a success of its kind, bringing to our attention a directorial vision with great creative potential.
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