Untitled

Keren Cytter, "Untitled", 2009.

Untitled is inspired by the movie "Opening Night" by John Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands playing the role of a fallen woman, anguished by her distressed life. In the film, we witness the drama of a blended family, heightened by adultery and finally murder. For the film's decor, Cytter, instead of filming a domestic interior, uses a theater stage, a place of representation by excellence. Dialogues, accessories and camera movements disrupt the boundary between the stage and the "behind the scenes" acts which are in fact staged. While its difficult to distinguish the stage's front and back, also it is difficult to determine the improvised and real. Like her other films, reality is constructed and artificial, but the theatrical element complicates our relationship to her characters. Are the actors in a scene or subjects of their own life? In "Untitled," the artist merges theatricality on stage and in life finally offering a permanent performance.