ON DEATH, Director: Anastassios Langis GR Poet: George V. Markis 6min 24s 2007
Here we are witness to (apparently the ghost of) a boy of about ten who recites a 1943 poem by George V. Markris. His delivery is strangely impassioned and dispassionate, something like the style adopted by Juan Perón and others in addressing the masses. The underlying hollow hum is an unsettling element in the proceedings. Standing alternately before a horse, Greek flags waved in a street demonstration, and other incongruous scenes for the pontificating youth’s presence, he tells us more of his “infinite deaths” (including one in Paris, of syphilis), but fails to truly connect. One can’t help feeling the child used is so wholly unaware of the meaning of what he is saying that he might as well be reciting the ingredients in a recipe. Still, the juxtaposition is an interesting idea, but might have been served better with a child more given to flights of fantasy, possibly a younger child with a more intense sense of drama often accompanying “play-acting”.