Event

SILENT LOVERS

Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
10min., USA
16mm, color

[OTHER VARIOUS WORKS]
Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
approx 30min., USA
16mm & 8mm, color & b&w

As if trapped in a warbly snow globe at the bottom of an ocean (probably not far off Coney Island), we peer into a crystalized void where ageless and speechless souls of elegant despair longingly linger. Obedient to the sovereign ruler of his silent universe, a hopeless mime plays lap dog to a covetous queen in their silky echo chamber of imprisonment. As revelations befall upon the crestfallen clown, he realizes his disenthrallment through a shattering escape with the hand of a pirouetting harlequin, while the Her Majestys empire and identity spiral into vibrant agony. Caught in a fantasy of abstract and eternal heartache, their faces are forever enslaved to express, or mask, what they cannot say.

Filmed in a dingy Brooklyn basement, as well as one of our own beloved d.i.y. venues, Julie Orlick and her team of unsung romantic weirdos bring to Spectacle her latest and most enterprising short film, Silent Lovers, within a retrospective of Orlicks works all shot in New York, and on glorious and grainy 16mm. An encounter with her films feels something like slipping out to the speakeasy and tending to a surreal bender with Kenneth Anger. Come indulge in a lavish feast of cake and cruelty, mermaids washed ashore, lecherous gazes, ladies lost in double exposure, murder and sugar cubes, and endless flowers all hot off the reel.