Opera plays with our perception through cleverly playing with light and darkness. In this cinematic collage, created using a single light source, a mysterious house very slowly emerges along a rural road at night. Little by little, layer by layer, more and more places light up, giving the space depth. In a carefully choreographed movement, we repeatedly view different parts of the scene, catching glimpses of the ghostly surroundings.
This slowly shifting light painting becomes an intense spectacle in which people appear and disappear and the road almost imperceptibly changes shape, until the powerful final shot suddenly casts the landscape in a different light.
Using only the basic elements of film—light, sound, and space—Igor Zelić has created a tableau vivant, a multilayered manipulation with an ultimately political undertone: behind the title Opera lies a historical reference to the use of propaganda and the construction of reality during the war in Croatia in 1991. Zelić shows us how an image can conceal reality—and what happens when that is no longer possible.
Stills
