During today’s class, I watched Night Cries by Tracey Moffatt with attention to images that articulate time, history, and memory. Right from the beginning, the sound effect triggered an uneasy feeling that lingered throughout the film. Taking notes while watching actually helped me to stay calmer.

One thing I found extremely interesting was Moffatt’s use of colors. She used vibrant contrasting colors such as blue and red to indicate the time of the day. Yellow was not only used to illustrate time but was also the dominant color in scenes that showed the dynamic of the mother-daughter relationship. I’m not sure if they had a healthy family relationship, but the color yellow definitely added warmth to the story. On the other hand, the daughter’s flashbacks of her childhood were filtered with a white-ish/grey-ish color. There were very few low contrast images, most colors used were highly saturated so the film looked very unnatural and the characters seemed isolated from the world. Thus, I was aware that everything was filmed in a very small studio, which caused me to feel more anxious.

While watching the film, 2 long shots that stood out to me were scenes where the daughter was waiting for her mother. I assume Moffatt lengthened the duration of those shots in order to show the daughter’s impatience and frustration. At the same time, I feel like she was also nervous and worried about her mother.

This film had ignited a lot of emotions, but most of the time I felt very uncomfortable and tense. Nonetheless, I thought the movie was very captivating and it was fun to see which images indicated the theme of time/history/memory. Also, I actually watched A Song of Air in another class before and absolutely enjoyed it. Based on these 2 films, I think essay films are quite intriguing so I will definitely look more into it for Screen Project 1.

References:

Bennett, M 2017, A song of air, YouTube, 3 August, ACMI Collection, viewed 26 July 2021, <https://youtu.be/IXo58MojuKI>.

Moffatt, T 1990, Night cries, streaming video, Ronin Films, viewed 26 July 2021, <https://rmit.kanopy.com/video/night-cries>.