Dreams of Being Alive

Do you ever dream of being Alive?.. Where do dreams end and where does life begin?…

This short film captures the threshold between what we can know about ourselves and what we can feel about ourselves…

The sense of being larger than life; of being larger than our physical frame is brought forth through a short poem written by artists Natalie and Gil Dekel in one of those moments of meditation when they saw themselves as mere messenger of an inspiring source.

The images showing Natalie Dekel are still images, used in this film for the purpose of delivering a silent message – a direct gaze, through a symbol drawn on the face, aiming at bringing a sense of comfort, which no words in this short description here could convey…

Q/A:

1. Why did you choose golden/brown texture for the background, with leaves pattern?

— Gold is a symbol for being alive. It comes from the earth and so it gives people a sense of belonging to the earth, a touchable sense of existence. The leaves pattern symbolises a ‘whisper of the spirits’, a kind of a memory of flowers, which nourish from the earth.

2. Why did you use still images instead of moving images?

— Because memory is not something that is in-tune with real life. Memory is a ‘cropped out’ image that one creates, and only as one changes with time, so does the sense of memory changes accordingly. Memory is a fixed image that is created by people.

3. What is the Egyptian symbol drawn on Natalie’s face?

— It is a variation of the Egyptian snake, which in the Egyptian mythology is regarded as one of the sources that participates in the creation of life. The snake has a connection to the earth, the tree of knowledge, and the bearing of the fruit (hence connecting to the leaves pattern and the golden colour we use). The snake also appears in the Celtic myth as a Yin/Yan balance of life/death, reality/illusion, male/female. This is why we chose a woman (Natalie) performing, and a man (Gil) narrating in male voice.

4. Why the symbol is drawn in blue colour?

— Blue colour symbolises protection, and represents the Chakra of communication.

5. What does the music symbolises?

— We tried to capture a sense of drops of rain with this music, to connect between dreams and reality, using high sounds and low beat, and digital and manual feeling.

Film by Gil and Natalie Dekel. Uploaded 28 Feb 2012.