JACKSON/MARKER 4AM

A night scene in Jackson, Mississippi: out on a street an Afro-American dances to rap music that can be heard from off camera. The camera quickly pans a lit veranda where a party seems to be going on. But the dancer (man – woman?) does not take any notice of it. He wears sneakers and dark pants, on top, a red dress that is set with sequins—a costume like a figure skater or a drag version of Spiderman. A street performance at 4 a.m. that also has to do with earning enough money for the next day: the dancer takes a bill in his mouth, like in a cartoon, the bill hangs like a tongue between his lips. At the end of the four-minute film, someone from the passenger seat of a car hands him another bill, but he is so enwrapped in his dance that he doesn’t notice. In the glow of the headlight, he moves to the other side of the car where the bill is handed to him a second time. A tense moment offering a minor climax in a scene, which as an extremely reduced excerpt from a complex social situation, refers to no more than the dancer’s self-absorption in his (inner) music. Ruth Beckermann places a quote of Chris Marker before the scene in which a quote by a character named Elena Andreievna is foisted on Puschkin, about a flute in South America whose sound can be heard only by those who play it. Although the quote is extremely illuminating for the scene that follows, it also drags us into a state of great ambivalence since the quote is made up, and made up in a way that also documentary films are: as movements through a reality that constantly abstracts into fiction.
(Bert Rebhandl)

Orig. Title
JACKSON/MARKER 4AM
Year
2012
Country
Austria
Duration
3 min 25 sec
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Category
Short film, Documentary
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Credits
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Script
Ruth Beckermann
Cinematography
Antoine Parouty
Editing
Dieter Pichler
Sound
Atanas Tcholakov
Executive Producer
Ruth Beckermann
Available Formats
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
Dolby digital
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour
DCP 2K flat (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,85
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
colour
Blu-ray (Distribution Copy)
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
25 fps
Festivals (Selection)
2012
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
Denver - Int. Film Festival
Victoria - Antimatter Underground Film Festival
2013
Ann Arbor - Film Festival
Marfa - Marfa Film Festival
Neubrandenburg (D) & Szczecin (PL) - dokumentART Film & Video Festival
2014
Dortmund / Köln - Internationales Frauenfilmfestival
Bruxelles - Festival L´age d´or