Stages of Mourning

16mm colour film (17 mins), which explores how our relationship with the dead is made different through film. Produced, directed, written, edited and shot by Pucill. A series of photographic stills from the film has been exhibited and published separately. Stages of Mourning is Pucill’s journey of bereavement, ritualised through performance to camera. The film is a meditation on coming to terms with loss, exploring how our relationship with the dead is made different through film. The artist orders image fragments of her late lover and collaborator, Sandra Lahire. By trying to physically immerse herself into photographs and film footage or by restaging these, Pucill forms a continuous stream of a life of two lovers. Through this doubling and layering, illusions accumulate as if these were a product of a machine that didn’t stop. The film explores the relationship between the hallucinatory power of the phantom of memory and the capacity for lens-based media to carry ghosts. A placing of the lesbian gaze is obsessively sought whilst simultaneously acknowledging the state of a decentred subjectivity. Pucill wrote, directed, shot, edited and produced the film, the process of hands-on authorship of all component parts being central to the artisan language and historical context of her work. The film has been extensively screened, including festivals in Paris, London, Cologne, Kassel, New York; conferences and galleries in USA and London (see portfolio for full list). Five photographs from the film were exhibited and published separately. Reviews include Naomi Salaman 'Accumulation in Stages of Mourning'; Vicky Smith, 'Stop Frame Motion in Stages of Mourning' (both at Lux-on-line). Pucill has herself written on the film (see output 4). The project won AHRC funding (£13,000). It was acquired for BFI archive; distributed by Lux (on film and sold as DVD), and distributors in Paris, Toronto and USA