Zanna Markillie

'Woman' is a film that explores the archetypal aspects of the feminine and her shadow. I videoed three distinct ages of woman - child, pregnant mother, mature woman - and wove them together to show the grace and beauty of the feminine. But I interrupt the flow of this by interjecting loaded sexual imagery of pipes with dark orifices. I wanted to create a hard juxtapotion of the two polarities - the light and the dark - so that the impact is both shocking and uncomfortable. This film is about how women hold an innate beauty and connection to innocence, birth, death, wisdom and yet what is projected onto them by this culture can be deeply degrading, limiting and disconnecting. I wanted to include the sense of how women are portrayed in the mass media as sexual objects of desire, to own and control.

 

The starting point of this film was the photograhing of dark spaces, especially caves. I went to Holywell Beach in Cornwall where there are many caves. This was an ecstactic experiene for me, one where I felt the dark mystery of the   feminine very present. The caves represented womb-like spaces, portals even, to another way of being. I feel that dark spaces hold potential for birth, death and transformation and that blackness is a fundamental element in this transformational space. Jung's concept of  'Prima materia' was significant in this exploration. Here he states that there is a common, elemental substance or "first matter," "found in filth," the original "chaos" or "sea" that constitutes all matter. I found that the caves could offer the 'prima materia', the primal ground, from which the unconscious could surface and meet the "heat" of awareness, therefore igniting an alchemical process.