Ulla von Brandenburg is particularly interested in the tableau vivant captured on film. This paradox of depicting a still image with a kinetic medium is fundamental to her work. Her work is redolent of nineteenth century art and photography, particularly genre and history painting, while also making reference to surrealism and to early interest in psychoanalysis and the paranormal. She makes films, watercolors of a ghostly nature and installations using curtains that recall the theatrical experience. She also foes performance. The tableau vivant mimics death, the characters being frozen in their poses. The spectator of the film is reminded not only of his/her mortality but of the sense of time suspended. The merging of film and photography in such films presents a paradox for there is a contradiction between the motif and the means of recording it. The camera acts as a surrogate for the viewer’s gaze as it surveys the scene. The stability of the scene is betrayed by the twitching of muscles, the impossibility of holding the pose and thus the intrusion of life onto a scene of death. von Brandenburg’s films are infused with melancholy, a sense of ‘otherness’ and the uncanny (unheimlich).  They are filmed in one take, the time taken being determined by the length of the film stock. Worked out in drawings and studies in advance, no rehearsal takes place but generally she shoots three or four times. Von Brandenburg’s films are disconcerting, finely crafted and compelling and contemplative.