“We yearned for Days of old when Knights were bold, but in the hot squabble of nostalgia we have burned our imaginary castles to the ground and busted our armour,” says Shifra Osorio Whewell, the author of audiovisual pieces, which build on the basis of old folk or fairy tales, reinterpreted in a rather funky and idiosyncratic style. Enjoy the videos and their colourful descriptions below.
Most Gracious
‘Order!’ goes the cry. But still the lords shout and the hordes whinge and the battle rages. The queen, her royal majesty’s ‘Most Gracious Speech’ is about anything but grace. In the Houses of Parliament they don’t hit each other with flaming sticks, yet, but they may as well. Will we ‘build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’ like Blake imagines in his once anti-establishment poem, turned patriotic hymn, once everything has been destroyed in the blaze?
We’re not crying, the smoke got in our eyes.
Cheerio chaps.
The Fish Prince
A film about a Fish Prince trapped in a supermarket herring package, based on Grimms fairy tale The Fisherman and his Wife. Fish gladly offers wishes to the grocery shopper protagonist but will the outrageous consumerist greed push her too far? Will the perilous stack of toilet paper tumble? A chorus of weeping, onion-chopping supermarket employees watch on as this fairy tale dream sequence unfolds to a fast paced poetry narration. In the enchanted fish world, onions are golden orbs and supermarket shoppers become entranced servant entourage.
This is a blast of catharsis in virus days when real supermarkets have become allegorical spaces, fraught with tension and danger.
BIO / Shifra Osorio Whewell uses film and music to tell old stories and tell them again, fresher. Prop- and costume-build fantasy carnival worlds where everyday objects get turned upside down and inside out. She currently studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
