THE SILENT RAY
2019 / 18 minStill image from The Silent Ray.
The Silent Ray is loosely based on a photograph taken in the northern region of Ethiopia in 1936. The photograph depicts three black shirt militia soldiers, among which was my maternal grandfather, in the midst of a rocky landscape, while they're engaged in extracting water from the bottom of a dry stream. Writing on the back attests that the photograph was taken after the precious water had already been found; for all their success however, the portrayed soldiers appear glum and haggard, almost hauntingly so.
In the pamphlet Eros e Priapo (1945), writer Carlo Emilio Gadda described Fascism as the folly that for twenty years plunged Italy into an abyss “where God himself is afraid to look,” and whose aim was “the total obliteration of the signs of life.” Gadda's words somehow resonate with the photograph, turning the simple task of searching for water in a barren landscape into a symbolic act, transfiguring the three haggard soldiers into figures from the theater of the absurd.
The short focuses on the character of my maternal grandfather recalling the events from the colonial war shortly before his death in the early 1970s. The setting is a stage model of the room that for many years served as his study. The recollections however could be those of any of the photographed soldiers, or those of an entire generation.
Ethiopia, 1936. Three soldiers (grandfather on the left) searching for water.
Gelatin silver print, 4.5 x 6.8 cm approx.
Gelatin silver print, 4.5 x 6.8 cm approx.
Oscillating between memory and hallucination, The Silent Ray probes the relation between public and private retelling of dramatic historical events — namely, the colonial war Fascism waged against Ethiopia in 1935-36. Through careful spatial reconstruction and a form of narration that draws extensively from the theatrical monologue, the work explores the human need for transcending one’s social and personal constraints, regardless of consequences.
The film follows the premises laid down in The Banquet.
© 2019 Rossella Nisio || Manic Owl Works