Author: José Val del Omar
35 mm digitalised. Bi-Standard. 3’ 5” in colour. Silent.
This short reel is a kind of cinematographic still-life. Based on an arrangement of pomegranates, Granada’s emblematic fruit, it combines animation (single-frame and stop-motion cinematography) with picto-luminic techniques. The figurative and abstract images are projected and blend anamorphically with the spherical bodies of the pomegranates. The warping and flash effects are created by incident laser light and other impacts of light. The translucid elements act as filters in front of the lens, adding the sensation of relief and peculiar textures. The dissections and details of the pomegranates’ innards highlight the red seeds, the peel and the yellow membrane covering them. He achieves kaleidoscopic and prismatic effects via simple optical devices with dizzying zooms in and out on the pomegranates’ still-life brought to life.
This work is one of the best examples of “pictoluminic touches” into which Val del Olmo delved in his later years, together with the recordings or notes he filmed in Super 8 of alchemies of light, images and common objects.
