The phantom of the Virgin

Pereyra Sarmiento, Patricia Susana

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/53216

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Authors

Pereyra Sarmiento, Patricia Susana

Advisor(s)

Alves, Pedro Miguel Barbosa

Abstract(s)

The main theme of this report is around the short film "The Phantom of the Virgin" and aims to discover whether an object is still an object even if it has no matter and how the idea of the object is more important than the object itself. In cinema, for example, we can say that an object exists (even if we only see its projection and then it disappears). In several films inspired by the text of A Gentle Creature (1874) or Krotkaya by the well-known writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky we find an object called an icon, but it does not represent in all versions a Byzantine Madonna. The representation of the concept is transformed into a new object each time. In this short film, also inspired by the story, the object is not an icon but a wooden carving of the Virgin of Fatima. We can recognize her because she is an important symbol for the Church. But her body is dismembered: she has no face, no hands, no eyes, and that is why she is in a restoration room. What is the meaning of a fractioned Madonna being an image that supports the Church? Her role as Mother of the faithful is the role followed by all mothers. In Bologna, as in other cities, there are religious centers that were pagan before they were Christian. The history of humanity and its cultural expressions is made up of layers that are superimposed on each other, not only by the transformation of what is read from the same text, but also by what remains of it. The traces of history continue to a-appear, but we do not understand the same thing. Objects make the call, but devices have been modifying the messages and the objects themselves. The new icon is the mobile phone that sends messages. The short film takes place in a scientific room for the restoration of objects and in the city of Bologna, which reminds us of a distant time. There is no connection between the settings (perhaps a sentence from the story about Bologna). The short film is fragmented, the ideas are loose, and the link is best understood by reading Dostoyevsky's story. Our time is fragmented. However, the super 16 format is maintained as a loyalty to the origins of cinema and the vestiges of a 19th century Russian tale.