Digital 2k from Super 8mm colour and toned and dyed b&w footage, silent, 9min., 2021.
Purkyně’s Dusk is an experimental short film about shifting colour perception according to the degree of illumination. It uses both analog and digital colour manipulations to create an intense and sensory defying visual experience based on the observations of light and colour carried out by the Czech physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně in the 1800’s.
Distributed by Light Cone, supported by Atelier 105 Experimental Film Post-Production Residency in Paris in September 2020. https://lightcone.org/fr/film-13023-purkyne-s-dusk
Screenings:
29th Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival – Experimental Competition, July 20th 2021.
http://festival.curtas.pt/blog-en/?id=838
67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Distributor’s Screenings, Light Cone Programme, 9th May 2021.
https://www.kurzfilmtage.de/en/film/purkyn-s-dusk-149649/
https://lightcone.org/fr/news-686-light-cone-au-festival-international-du-court-metrage-d-oberhausen
22ème Rencontres Cinéma et Vidéo de Nice, Cinematic Nature Screening programmed by Emmanuelle Nègre and Regard Indépendant/Festival OvNi, November 9th 2021.
https://www.ovni-festival.fr/oeuvres/purkynes-dusk/
Festival Ecrã, Rio de Janeiro, screening July 3rd at Cinemateca do MAM and July 6 at Estação Botafogo, 2022
https://www.festivalecra.com.br/6fecrafilmescurta-1/crepusculo_de_purkyne_o
Museum d’Histoire Naturelle as part of Nature Expanded, programmed by Elio Della Noce and Emmanuel Lefrant, Paris, January 2023
https://www.mnhn.fr/fr/film/cycle-nature-elargie-sentir-comme-une-plante
“Initially one sees only black and grey. Then the brightest colours, red and green, appear darkest. Yellow cannot be distinguished from a rosy red. Blue looks to me the most noticeable. Nuances of red, which otherwise burn brightest in daylight, namely carmine, cinnabar and orange show themselves as darkest, in contrast to their average brightness. Green appears more bluish, and its yellow tint develops with the increasing daylight” (New Contributions, Jan Evangelista Purkyně, 1825, pp. 109–110).
The visual effect he described in 1825 determines that our perception of colour is dependant on the degree of illumination. Both the identifiable tints and the contrast between colours are perceived differently in bright or low light conditions.The images for this film were captured in super8mm colour and black and white, in a garden setting on a late summer afternoon edging towards dusk. Two static figures appear in the artificial nature of a garden decor, filmed evenly as living models alongside flowers and plants in changing light replete with bright colours and patterns.
In the editing process, digital effects of de-saturation and contrast variation were used to alter the digitally transferred images, in combination with photo-chemical manipulations such as toning, dying, and colorisation applied onto the black and white original footage.
As a visual experience that “plays on our eyes and disrupts all our senses”, the film aims to defy our perception of colour representation and shed new light on the artistic and conceptual relations between analogue and digital techniques.
“Dans Purkyné’s Dusk (2021), Helena Gouveia Monteiro explore les variations de perception de la couleur dans des conditions de faible luminosité, en référence aux travaux du physiologiste Jan Evangelista Purkyné, lequel a donné son nom à l’effet Purkyné. La cinéaste fait poser un homme et une femme dans un parc, alternant les prises sur eux et sur des plantes et des fleurs, œuvrant à l’immersion et à la fusion des humains dans le végétal et dans la matière filmique argentique. Le film ne cesse de procéder par sauts : des végétaux aux humains ; d’une mimésis transparente à une plasticité affirmée. Des tâches de développement sur la pellicule induisent l’idée d’une immersion : tout comme la pellicule est plongée dans un bain chimique, le couple est plongé dans un bain de nature, de verdure et de couleurs, jusqu’à s’y fondre et y disparaître. Sur le chemin d’un égalitarisme, le générique de fin indique après le nom des deux acteurs humains le nom des acteurs végétaux apparus à l’écran : Papaver, Geranium, Skimmia, Malus, Euonymus, Escallonia, Nymphae, Cordyline. Reterrestrer l’humain invite à ré-imaginer l’ensemble du vivant, au sens de le remettre en image, de le remettre dans l’image, pour lui-même.”
Vincent Deville, “Plonger dans le grand bain, pour renouveler et étendre nos perceptions” in Expanded Nature, Light Cone Editions 2022 (p.240)
https://lightcone.org/fr/publication-79-expanded-nature
“Jan Evangelista Purkyně was a Czech physiologist who, in the mid-19th century, conducted a series of studies on light and color, which came to the conclusion that the human perception of color depends on the intensity of illumination. Two centuries later, Helena Gouveia Monteiro studies, through artistic creation, the different visual and cultural recognitions engendered in humans by the various perceptions of language and audiovisual experiences. In “Purkyně’s Dusk”, her debut work at Curtas, the artist captures Super 8 footage of a garden in the late afternoon of a summer day, both in color and in black-and-white. This dusk, with a fainter contrast of figures, was later manipulated, in editing, with the use of both digital desaturation and more traditional photochemical processes of photography. Helena Gouveia Monteiro creates an eminently visual experience, reminiscent of the famous Kodak’s “Shirley Cards”, and enhanced by the absence of sound, which challenges the viewer to question their own perception.” 29th Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival
