Spanning over 20 years, director Karin Berger, highlights the seemingly mundane activities that commence in a single parent’s everyday life and condenses it into a 12 minute silent film.
The film starts with the ticking of a clock, a not so subtle cuethat each moment is fleeting. And much like the film itself, you seem to blink and 20 years wash by. Broken into 6 sections, we enter the filmmaker’s life as she prepares for the birth of her daughter. With quick abrupt cuts to each scene, the moments wash over us quickly as if recalling a faint memory. There is enough information to know what was experienced without any of the backstory.
Baby clothes are strewn across the apartment. We see shot after shot of preparing milk, cleaning bottles, and picking up scattered toys.
The daughter grows up. There is a horse phase. Every single thing in the house has a horse on it: toys, blanket, sweatshirt, drawings, socks, patch, figurines.
We see the rebellion of the teenage daughter. Decorating her wall with stickers, leaving a note that she will do chores later, slamming the door.
The daughter graduates. She moves out.
The filmmaker cleans the house, paints over the hand prints on the wall, packs up toys, and renovates the house now that she is a single-nester once again. The viewer watches and listens as the filmmaker tells her story through these videos clips.
We can imagine the moments chosen to be shared hold significance to the filmmaker, whether because of an important milestone (e.g. the birth of her daughter, her daughter graduating) or because of the repetitiveness of events (i.e. washing clothes, the horse phase).
O! Fortuna is an honest recollection of one’s life. It appears to reveal the unexciting, regular bits of day-to-day life. However as you watch, you see that her life was centered around her child. You begin to realize how important her daughter is, and that her life revolves around caring for her. It makes this reviewer think about life and how each person holds a story inside themselves. No two trajectories are alike, and because of this all stories are unique.
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Photos courtesy of FLYING FILM FESTIVAL
About the Author:
Francesca Baron is a freelance Chicago based choreographic + performing artist. Graduating cum laude with dual degrees in Dance and Psychology from Lindenwood University. Francesca is drawn to dance because it allows for dynamic expression through the instrument of one’s body. Making it a priority to travel and train in leading modern/contemporary dance forms, Francesca has attended The American Dance Festival (NC), One Body, One Career intensive (Amsterdam, NL), FACT S/F workshop (CA), New Dialect intensive (TN), LINK Dance Festival (UT), and Detroit Dance City Festival (MI), as well as many Chicago festivals and intensives. She has also been commissioned to create works for Inaside Chicago Dance, Esoteric Dance Project, New Dances 2019, and Lindenwood University. Currently, she is a company member of Still Inspired(?) as they prepare for their sixth season.
Learn more about Francesca at Francesca Baron website
