Nepenthe

Nepenthe (2024)

Video, 13'16''
4280×1620 px, 2.64:1
Actor: Michael Della Giustina
A No Filter Films production 

Nepenthe is a film that exists in a permanent present, continuously circulating around a void. Between memory and forgetting, a cancelled future becomes an empty ruin, inhabited by the illusion of the Real. 

Nepenthe 

1. a drug, or the plant providing it, that ancient writers referred to as a means of forgetting grief or trouble.
2. anything that produces sleep, forgetfulness, or pleasurable dreaminess. 

Nepenthe is set when the future is cancelled, leaving us in a permanent present. The protagonist finds himself on the planet of Nepenthe, in a permanent present, under the spell of forgetting. Reality has been driven out of reality, and the future becomes an empty ruin, a void that is inhabited by the illusion of the virtual. 

Nepenthe is an exploration of time and duration in film, and positions itself between classical tropes of cinema and contemporary video. Taking the permanent present as a condition of the contemporary video, Nepenthe layers multiple fragmented and fractured moments in time, to form a continuous dialogue in space which is in itself evolving in both the diegetic time of the film, as well as of the “real time” of the spectator. A speculative film set between past, present and future, Nepenthe uses the medium of film to develop alternatives to the fabric of time and space. The diegetic time of the film therefore becomes a third space between past, present and future, contained within the permanent present of the film. This permanent present is conditioned by an impulsive oscillation between memory and forgetting. 

The fragmentary nature of Nepenthe resists chronological narrative time, and refuses to move forward, rejecting the closed form of start and finish, and aims to portray reality in a more “realistic” manner, mirroring the functioning of memory, or that of compulsive repetition in the creation of illusion, continuously circling the outskirts of the void.