XYZ, 2026

Digital Video, 4K, Black & White, Stereo Sound, 11'42''

Short Synopsis:
An obsessive exploration of the three geometric dimensions in hopes of reaching a fourth.

Description:
Microscopically constructed through single-frame animation and structural filmmaking techniques, Alagôa’s XYZ (2026) transforms a familiar architectural environment into a Merleau-Pontian field of perceptual relationships.

The apparently abandoned office building is obsessively dissected into a swallowing wave of still frames, camera movements, zooms, pans, flickers, generating a seemingly fragmented, but ever fluid, gestaltian continuity between different floors, corridors and facades as if an Escherian Babel Tower had now been elevated — a new dizzying mise-en-abymesque space within the already established original building.

But no plot is ever resolved. Rather than documenting the purpose of the uncanny architecture, setting up any narrative around the corridors, or giving any sort of explanation for the eerie feeling embedded within the walls, Alagôa chooses, instead, to examine how the cinematic apparatus functions as a parallel to human perception, destabilizing and rearranging the act of seeing and hearing back to their core.

Throughout this puzzling experience, our eyes are forced to participate in the perpetual flow inbetween each fragmented piece of the space, our ears blend with the sound design originally recorded from the tempest of bureaucratic work life and, our body, swept up in this maelstrom, enters into a shamanic, hypnotic state from which it refuses to leave. No audience is ever passive in any of Alagôa’s films. The spectator is alive, and it is as if their senses have taken on a life of their own.

film by: Alexandre Alagôa
sound engineer: Rytis Kančys
produced by: Filmes do Gajo

Screenings: