16mm on dv, 12 min., D 2009
Three women – two dressed as unicorns and one as a virgin – meet, frighten, and seduce one another in the forest. The film, produced in 2009 for the “LIVE FILM! Jack Smith! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" Festival in Berlin is an homage to Jack Smith (1932-1989).
Inspired by Jack Smith's anti-capitalist production style and the idiosyncratic symbolism of his characters, the costumes were made by hand and/or from trash. Smith screened his films as a kind of performance in ever changing live edits and combinations, while playing selected, found, and exotic records. OSMOSIS OF THE UNICORN was shot on 16mm and is accompanied by a soundtrack in which a wild range of sounds and different kinds of music come together: old Hawaiian songs, partly sung along to, a French record with predator bird calls, and sounds generated by a chaos oscillator. The elliptically edited film reflects and celebrates its unfinished quality by including waste material and "film mistakes."
The story is a quite normal one. Isabell Spengler refers to Jack Smith’s conception of the terms "normalcy" and "queerness." Using normal clothing and normal animality, the film conveys the fantasies of adolescent girls, examining concepts like "normal love" in a contemporary context from a female perspective.
starring:
Angela Anderson
Ruth Waldeyer
Ida Wilde
direction, camera, editing and sound: Isabell Spengler
with music by: Uli Ertl, Daniel Adams
