Beatrice Gibson &
An adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s 1929 surrealist murder-melodrama opera script Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, London-based artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson’s short film Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs elusively weaves together an abstract crime story with intimate encounters around the topics of pregnancy and parenthood, precarity and resilience. Simultaneously iridescent and enigmatic, the loose narrative includes the search for a poodle gone missing, a Glam Rock starlet on the verge of a breakdown, washerwomen’s labour routines, and a contemplating poet. It also comprises the depiction of a dream about a new-born turning into a fried egg or existentialist revelations around the fears of reproduction under neo-fascist rule and looming barbarism. Revealing a high-scale production mode and set in contemporary Paris with further filming sites in London and Lisbon, the short film uses a timely multi-language approach of English, French and Brazilian Portuguese. Furthermore, it contains an original dramatic soundtrack created by composer Laurence Crane that is interwoven with the theatrical and campy singing of the Rock starlet, or songs of the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten’s Total Eclipse of the Sun. In direct reference to Gertrude Stein’s inclusion of autobiographical details into her subject matters, for Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs Gibson has been casting a number of friends, peers, and influences to be in front of the camera including artist and filmmaker Ana Vaz, multimedia artist Adam Christensen, educator Diocouda Diaune, and New York School poet Alice Notley. The experimental film has been developed in close dialogue with the short I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead (2018) that takes interviews of poets C.A. Conrad and Eileen Myles as its starting point. It then unravels into a homage of radical feminist thinkers and artists as much as a tribute to her own daughter. Both works open up a space to reflect upon notions of collective artistic processes, trans-generational kinship relations, and the traditions of non-compliance as means for sociopolitical engagement out of a feeling of responsibility for future generations. (Viktor Neumann)
