By Dianela Torres*

Video essay that explores the relations between montage and music in Sergei Parajanov’s film Shadows of our forgotten ancestors (1965). Parajanov seems to perceive montage as an organic form, in this case, linked to death and grieving. The audiovisual perception is layered in a sensorial sequence that is associated through rhythms (visual and sound). The montage is shown as a dialectical thought. Every shot, sequence and montage is expressed as ancestors.

Montages are like shadows, or shadows appear to be like montage. Montage implies a dialectical process where dead images (and characters) become alive. Here the audiovisual reflections are presented through the appropriation of the film and thinking in its own sequential relationship, through visual and sound sources. It is also an interpretation and dialectical appropriation of rhythmic and metric, the emotions and the fluid time-space, music and colors. The sound from the original sequence functions for the re-montage articulation, where the audiovisual materials are interfered with fragments from the same film. The footage from the film was remixed for analysis purposes.

*Mariana Dianela Torres, Mexico City. She has a degree in Communication Sciences and has specialized in Audiovisual Production from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the UNAM, focused on independent experimental production and artistic research. She has attended seminars and classes at the MUAC, the UNAM Film Library, the CUEC and the National Film Archive. Since 2015 her work has been presented and screened both in Mexico, the United States and Iran, as well as in South America, Africa and Europe at various film and video festivals, as well as museums and exhibitions.