Intermède

Images of a small boatyard, somewhere in Greece. Between the repairs and the boats’ departures, a team of men haul them ashore and set them afloat again. A 16 mm film built around gestures and movements that oscillate between a toing and froing, attachment and detachment, tension and tenderness.

While the sea gives Intermède its horizon, the boats themselves transform into silky landscapes gleaming with seaweed. The frame struggles to contain the imposing objects that fill it entirely at times and which men gird with ropes, cables and chains to make manipulating them easier. They experience these objects as an environment explored with their hands and which envelops them with its sounds – gratings and creakings against the background noise of breaking waves. In the credits, we discover that the images were filmed over seven years. The timeless black and white of the 16mm film has transported us into a cyclical and seemingly unchanging present. A choreography unfolds: the men have to defy gravity, haul tired boats out of the water, then push them back into the sea. Maria Kourkouta deconstructs the linearity of their tasks to film relationships of texture and scale, little fellows against massive boats. Wood and metal seem to have a mind of their own, stirred by spontaneous movements. They too are at work, under the momentum of the workers. Set to a musical montage, the men’s gestures imprint a tidal rhythm on the boats: the blackened hulls come to lap the shore, then retreat again once cared for. The silver salts of the photochemical emulsion express the apposition of materials, make the waves and floating bodies dance together in the same interplay of gravitational forces. A sensual poem is composed, as if to preserve the memory of lives that still belong to the physical realm. 

Olivia Cooper-Hadjian