In the third installment in the Benac-cycle, Audrey has been named literary executor of her grandmother’s testament and is investigating her archived correspondences. Interpreting motivations on the basis of private letters from decades ago makes her feel like an intruder, and having to work with translations and gaps in the material doesn’t make things any easier.
Delving into the correspondence brings up more questions than answers. The geographical and temporal distance between the writers is part of the nature of written correspondence. Audrey herself is one more factor in this dynamic. She has to decide, how much of the real-life letters can be mirrored against the literary works of the two writers.
The meticulous, slow and often lonely nature of archival work is depicted with precision. Long takes and unassuming visuals bring to mind the everyday humanism sought after in the films of Chantal Akerman. films. Director Sofia Bohdanowicz’s mystery-style balancing of facts and interpretation find pictorial parallels in Audrey’s journey towards accepting uncertainty.
In the essayistic short film Point and Line to Plane the protagonist of the series is, instead of probing the depths of archives, encountering her own grief through art. Finding significance in abstraction helps Audrey to process the immense sorrow of losing a loved one. The points and lines in the works of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky function as anchors in the midst of an emotional tempest. (Emilia Koivumäki)
Language: English, no subtitles
Finnish premieres
In the presence of Sofia Bohdanowicz
