The cross-continental journey of a mysterious package inspires an epistolary exploration of time, memory, and grief in A Woman Escapes (2023). Unleashed by the newly-minted distribution arm of Prismatic Ground, Escapes is a fitting first release for the nascent festival, which rapidly attained prominence for its unique curatorial approach to experimental documentary.
This cinematic exquisite corpse, from filmmaking trio Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik, and Blake Williams, begins with a simple and now familiar premise: in March 2020, Paris resident Audrey (frequent Bohdanowicz collaborator Deragh Campbell) is adrift in Montmartre. Staring down an indeterminate period of isolation, Audrey is grieving the loss of friend and mentor Juliane—the real-life star of Bohdanowicz’s 2017 documentary Maison du Bonheur—against the backdrop of an increasingly visible public health crisis. When a parcel from Blake arrives on her doorstop, containing a Fuji digital 3D camera, Audrey seizes the opportunity to translate her ennui into a revealing sequence of lush images.
Across political and temporal borders, the trio of filmmaker-narrators in Escapes exchange, replicate, and reimagine each other’s respective gazes and insights. Armed with the power of prosumer technology, and woven throughout with mesmerizing 3D sequences, the resulting cinematic brain transplant invites audiences to see through the eyes of their remote tour guides. With its plaintive pace and static compositions, Escapes could well be an entry into the emerging genre I call “slideshow cinema”: intimate image-making that, with its diaristic vignettes and unapologetic use of second and third screens, exalts in the revealing the seams of its process.
A Woman Escapes opens this evening, June 9, at Anthology Film Archives and runs through June 15, accompanied by a program of previous films by its creators.
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