Fall In Frame opens with the image of a young woman looking at herself and her camera in the mirror, each revealed as she unwraps a sheet to uncover the lens. She sets up the filming space by staging both set and camera and manipulates the light by handling the blind, each action weighted with its sound. Filming herself falling asleep and awakening, in and out of consciousness, the woman switches the camera on and off. Deliberation and indifference at once determine her actions as she sits at the table pouring tea, impassively combs strands of long hair or lounges on a bed. Meticulously constructing her own confinement, she repeatedly checks herself in mirror and camera, all the while moving in and out of frame. With an even paced performance the woman proceeds to stitch her apron to the tablecloth with her hair. As she stands, the crockery comes crashing down. Gathered together into her dress, the debris is then thrown out of the window. Outside, in the garden, objects and camera are piled onto the cloth that becomes a trail as it is attached to her dress. From suburban street to sea-shore, camera and trail follow her. In Fall In Frame the materiality of the filmmaking process is explored within a constrained performance that blurs the split between the physical and consciousness. The elastic role of the white cloth that wraps the body or camera, covers the table, shuts out the light or trails the dress, evokes a white canvass or film screen upon which images or objects are projected, painted or sewn onto. The sheet literally folds between foreground and background, space and object, form and content. The film ends where it starts with the sheet around the camera, shutting out the image.


Directed: Sarah Pucill
Funded: Arts Council of England
Art Direction: Sally Pucill
Camera and Edit: Sarah Pucill
Performer: Lucy Pratt
Dubbing mixer: Konrad Welz