Portraits of women. And men, who are spellbound by them. The painted portraits – a recurring motif of film noir as well as European postwar cinema – aesthetically stand in a tradition of an outmoded academic style that is bent on striking likeness with the model. They are revenants, omens of absence, metaphors for loss and death, objects of desire and fixation, which mesmerize both the viewer in the movie and in front of the screen.

The tension, that is invoked by the contrast between the still and the moving image, likewise refers to the fact that the time-based medium here is thrown back to its origin – the single image. A fatal sign. For the story comes to a standstill. This does no harm to the portraits’ own life. They are covered with the vibrant film material as though with a second skin, grainy and shimmering. In serial montages they develop their character.