After this tape, there can be no doubt that Weeb is a man of many talents. A well as video productions he makes audio-visual environments, Music and he also works as a professional graphic designer. In Désirs calcinés, that means so much as 'scorched desires', he combines them all. It is a visual poem in seven separate vignettes. The central theme is love, the desire and inability to have love. In a mythical universe peopled by remarkable characters, there is a continual struggle on the edge of insanity. Swinging back and forth between aggression and tenderness, they seem to be searching for the higher love, time and again symbolized by the emblem of the Sacred Heart. Thus, in 'Sous l'écorce', an Egyptian priestess slowly encircles a beating heart in a glass pot in a magical dance, only then to lose herself in a furious collage of religious prints and symbols. In 'Déchirement', a chained man in the stocks is almost erased and torn by the texture of scratched film material. Finally, he disappears in a graphic storm of words. A crucified, hung woman in 'Les amants de Babylon' is loved by a gentlemen in a top hat, while a cross between Cupid and Toth shoots arrows into the Sacred Heart in the centre of a target. The tone in Désirs calcinés is set by mixing damaged and scratched film material, in which the characters move in an almost fluid universe. Sometimes they appear to be forging a way through a slow, clotting image surface. Take particular notice of Weeb's special attention to typographical image elements, which often serve as abstract, almost physical objects rather than communicating a literary meaning.
– Geert-Jan Strengholt
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Camera, Light André Turpin, Eric Lévesque, Herman Weeb, With Danielle Hubbart, Sophie Lessard, Michel Paquin, Guy Uno
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1 9 9 7 
