The Kiss
2020
William Heise’s “The Kiss," from 1896, is marketed in Edison’s film catalogue as an unforgettable film: “they get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.” A film about a kiss, a scandal for its time. This is not that film, but it's also about a kiss.
In The Kiss, the sexual act is reduced to its eponym: a long kiss multiplied on several faces, several lips and tongues, saliva, moans, the sound as an assault on the senses. The paradox of the pure act, the kiss, in an impure, pornographic film, reveals that the “problem” is not the kiss as a concept, but its application in various forms. The “socially accepted” form of the kiss is not any of these and the insistence on showing them, listening to them, culminates in a saturation that bothers. The fact that the fragments belong to porn films (an evidence for their formal characteristics), throws the film into the territory of discomfort, depending on the context where it is presented and whether that context is a social experience (cinema) or individual (computer at home), institutional (museum) or casual (social networks). If, again, the trend of cinema is to show more and more, defending itself in the simulation of the act, and therefore safeguarding the viewer from the staging of what he sees, such as when we see someone shooting another person in a film, with The Kiss I propose to show as little as possible, but of an object in which the act, although we do not see it in this context, is not simulated, making us complicit in moral illegality. Would this film be accepted on a social network? Is it more or less obscene than the porn films that compose it?
from the director's statement.
a film by
Miguel De
poster design
Igor Ramos
specs
Experimental
8'50'' — HD — Color
screenings
Shortcutz — Ovar, Portugal, 2021
Shortcutz — Guimarães, Portugal, 2021
Caminhos do Cinema Português — Coimbra, Portugal, 2020
A importância de acreditar no desconhecido - Colectivo Prometeu — Porto, Lisboa, Portugal, 2020
FEST New Directors New Films Festival — Porto, Portugal 2020
The Kiss
2020
William Heise’s “The Kiss," from 1896, is marketed in Edison’s film catalogue as an unforgettable film: “they get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.” A film about a kiss, a scandal for its time. This is not that film, but it's also about a kiss.
In The Kiss, the sexual act is reduced to its eponym: a long kiss multiplied on several faces, several lips and tongues, saliva, moans, the sound as an assault on the senses. The paradox of the pure act, the kiss, in an impure, pornographic film, reveals that the “problem” is not the kiss as a concept, but its application in various forms. The “socially accepted” form of the kiss is not any of these and the insistence on showing them, listening to them, culminates in a saturation that bothers. The fact that the fragments belong to porn films (an evidence for their formal characteristics), throws the film into the territory of discomfort, depending on the context where it is presented and whether that context is a social experience (cinema) or individual (computer at home), institutional (museum) or casual (social networks). If, again, the trend of cinema is to show more and more, defending itself in the simulation of the act, and therefore safeguarding the viewer from the staging of what he sees, such as when we see someone shooting another person in a film, with The Kiss I propose to show as little as possible, but of an object in which the act, although we do not see it in this context, is not simulated, making us complicit in moral illegality. Would this film be accepted on a social network? Is it more or less obscene than the porn films that compose it?
from the director's statement.
a film by
Miguel De
poster design
Igor Ramos
specs
Experimental
8'50'' — HD — Color
screenings
Shortcutz — Ovar, Portugal, 2021
Shortcutz — Guimarães, Portugal, 2021
Caminhos do Cinema Português — Coimbra, Portugal, 2020
A importância de acreditar no desconhecido - Colectivo Prometeu — Porto, Lisboa, Portugal, 2020
FEST New Directors New Films Festival — Porto, Portugal 2020