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'The eye is a strange object. It is soft. The eye is located in the face. All living creatures have two eyes. Symmetry does not exist.' In the Reformatory referred to in the title and where, it might be added, the lodgings are a lot more pleasant than in the proverbially gloomy institutes where, in years gone by, the fear of God and an honest trade were hammered into orphans or young drop-outs, there now live a Man, a Woman and a Child. The presumed parents acquit themselves with verve of their educational task by extensively discussing and defining all kinds of phenomena. Their definitions which fan out towards various analogies and other contexts, clarify at best only partially. The confrontation with such fragmentarily selected encyclopaedia data causes Borgia-like confusion for the child against which it protects itself by maintaining stubbornly that 'ghosts do not exist, but monsters do'. The basic philosophical tone is serious, but the pedantic assertiveness with which everything is stated leads to irresistible hilarity. The visual illustrative material in this introductory lesson in World Philosophy concentrates rightly on primary images: the sea, a man on the beach with a metal detector, rain drops in a puddle next to a drain or on the window of a passing train / fire, charred picket fence around houses / a piano, a water-level gauge, the horses on a carousel / rocks (washed by the sea or stuck fast between railway sleepers), earth (seen through the filter of a fence). The continuity of this symbolic series of images, which are sometimes correlated with each other by manipulations with split screen or slow motion to freeze frame, is reflected in rhythmically spoken cadences of nouns which almost replace their subject as an indication of feelings. Cataloguing after all makes reality manageable. It is strikingly realistic and therefore coincidentally profoundly sorrowful that this witty expose concludes with lines for the Child 'I must not make mistakes.'
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Erik Daams
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Translation: Claire Mullier, Editing: José Louis González Beorlegui, Franck Magnant, Sound: Jesús Gestoso, Francisco Ruiz de Infante, Voices: Raoul Pastor, Patricia Bopp, Arnaud
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