Silent

It had taken me almost twenty-four hours to arrive in Brooklyn. Many hours later I awoke, with the sound of the aircraft engines still in my ears, out of the coma I landed in after coming home. The jet lag, or the echo after flying, would still take some time. Although I felt awake and ready for the day, it was hard to start moving. Everything I normally do quickly, now took hours.

I decided to go outside and spend part of this day seeing Brooklyn. As I cycled around on my bike, I tried to think of a plan to go somewhere. In itself, drinking coffee is always a good thing to do in New York, but I wanted to have done more than to cycle a couple of blocks just to get a shot of caffeine. I decided to go to BAM, one of Brooklyns cultural centers, where, among other things, they screen great films. Based on the time it would start, I found a movie that would get me home in time for dinner, The Artist. I didn't even read the tagline, when I sat down in the room. Before me sat a middle aged couple with their teenage son. I found it funny that these three people went to the cinema together at this time of the day.

The film began as an old classic silent film. I remember thinking: 'what a weird beginning', but soon I realised that this was the movie. A silent film, like the old days. The story itself wasn't the most catchy one, and it wasn't the surprising end that made it a special film. I found it a very special film because I suddenly realized that I almost never experience silence. There is always noise everywhere. And now, I was sitting in a large room with fifty other people, with nothing more than some silly music.



The absence of dialogue, combined with the fatigue I was still feeling, sometimes, my thoughts wandered of, only to get back and focus on the film and its cinematic techniques that were used to keep the audience attention. I thought about the theater week when we worked with masks and how I discovered how the facial expression is such a big part of interaction, and how you need to compensate for that if you can't use your face. A few months ago, I made a film without words, without dialogue, without sound, run on a 16 mm camera. Then also, the image had to speak for itself.

The Artist is a wonderful film, which makes you long for the old times. When we didn't have all those thousands of images and sounds a day we get now. A little more peace and quiet wouldn't be so bad. It's like traveling: although you can fly your body to New York in eight hours, it takes a few days before the mind gets there too. And while you wait for those two to come together, you need to take it easy, buy watching films and drinking coffee.