Sunday 22 February 2009

Jane & Louise Wilson: Unfolding the Aryan papers

archive still

Showing at the BFI at the moment is a short video directed by Jane and Louise Wilson, about a film that never happened (planned and heavily researched by Kubrick, then spontaneously dropped) and a portrait of the leading artist Johanna ter Steege. It begins with images of Johanna taken by Stanley Kubrick - they are for the wardrobe shoot of The Aryan Papers. Johanna was to play the lead role of Tania , a compelling character. She is a Polish Jew trying to save herself and her family from the Nazis.


The amount of research overwhelmed Kubrick, in the end it left him depressed and for his own health he had to abandon the project. Maybe the story itslef was too cruel, and he in the end was unable to tell the story. Kubrick the famed perfectionist never felt he could justify the movie, or express the cruelty shown within that period.
A beautiful, still shot video which unearths repossessed histories within film, and expresses how even the greatest filmakers know that some works can never be realised.

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