Goethe Forum: Piaffe

Both a love letter to the less recognized magicians of cinema and a playful celebration of otherness, Piaffe is an opportunity for the viewers to see with their bodies and touch with their eyes.

When her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown, the introvert Eva is forced to take on Zara’s job as a Foley artist. She struggles to create sounds for a commercial featuring a horse, and then a horsetail starts growing out of her body. Empowered by her tail, she lures a botanist into an affair, through a game of submission.

Ann Oren’s debut feature film Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice. A hypnotic, intimate journey to and beyond the boundaries of the cinematique experience and the interplay of our senses. Finely staged in every detail, challenging and capturing us in the process, the film turns our mind as well as our habits upside down and exposes our perception and social constructs.

"With a wildly imaginative and perfectly controlled mise en scène, Oren creates a unique, mesmerising setting that excites our minds and frees our senses... Piaffe‘s hypnotic journey immerses us in an intimacy made up of vital lymph and sexual impulses, where plants, animals, and humans mysteriously reconnect with one another to celebrate life, offering us one of the greatest cinematic experiences in a long time." (Maria Giovanna Vagenas Senses of Cinema)

Directed by Ann Oren | 86 mins. | Northern California Premiere

Presented by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco
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