Naked Reality

Wanita (Weza Da Silva), is on a search for her identity. As it is often the case in Bekolo's work, the personal identity of the character is but the smallest manifestation of an identity struggle for an entire people, and the identity struggle of the film itself, of the process of filmmaking, which in this case is literally trying to form itself before our eyes. This is an "afrofuturistic/sci-fi" film, as the website describes it, taking place 150 years in the future when the human race is plagued by a terrible virus - "bad luck." The main character seemingly travels back and forth between the present and the future, and also carries on conversations with ancestors as well as with alternate selves, like Wanita Bis, who wants to be a television star. But the ultimate goal of the film is a philosophical and aesthetic exploration of the dividing line between fiction and reality, which is perhaps Bekolo's main artistic interest. Among the director's memorable lines on the topic, consider the following: "We shouldn't just be making movies, we should be changing reality." Naked Reality relies on a few visual tricks that support the material split between reality and fiction. The black and white creates a stylized atmosphere that, through sharp contrasts, aggressively suggests the future. It also brings to mind experimentation, but at a formal level, it points to a lack (through the implicit lack of color). And this is a film that is indeed missing various parts. The dualism at work here is reinforced in the director's choice of the superimposition. This is a transition effect used to link up two shots that overlap for a few seconds, but in this film the superimpositions last unusually long (by classical cinema conventions). A low-angle shot that travels under the trees returns several times to provide the characters with a kind of visual base on which to build another scene. Since the film lacks traditional sets, the visual splits and fills that void of materiality with itself, as it were. There are also several upside-down shots and a few edited through a negative filter - the reverse of the initial reality. Characters also speak to each other as they peek from behind a curtain, shot through a grainy filter. VLAD DIMA