Installation | Video
Decryption, 2023
Video with sound / Duration: 12:26’ min. Language: Hebrew, with English subtitles
watch excerpt
Synopsis
When memories of her mother begin to fade, artist Maya Zack returns to the morbid poem her mother used to recite to her as a child to lull her to sleep.
In the mesmerizing cinematic poem "Decryption," Zack deconstructs, weaves, and reassembles the poem and attempts, through it, to revive the memory of the body of her mother, who died prematurely.
Zack’s own experience of motherhood inspired “Decryption” which depicts a magical-artistic rite in the chain of intergenerational and inter-female transmission between daughters and mothers, real and spiritual, alive and dead. Through this rite, Zack seeks to decipher the alchemy of memory and oblivion and to formulate an answer to the fear of being forgotten and our inevitable death.
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Cast and Crew
Director, writer: Maya Zack / Participants: Maya Zack, Uzi Zack / script: Maya Zack and Amos Ponger / Cinematography: Stanislav Levor / Editing: Amos Ponger / Score: Ophir Leibovitch / Set design and drawing: Maya Zack / Sound design and mix: Neal Gibbs - Jungle Sound Studio / Online editing: Stanislav Levor / English translation: Helga Abraham / Titles Design: Michal Shapira
The work was produced with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund
Awards
34 Message to Man International Film Festival Saint Petersburg
Student Jury Prize “For the integrity of expression” awarded to Decryption,
directed by Maya Zack. Israel, 2023
70th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (international competition)
Special Mention award by the Ecumenical Jury
Selected exhibitions, festivals and screenings:
2024 - Interrupted Dreams, Nine short films from three experimental programs of the film festival "Message to Man", Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. Curator: Mikhail Zheleznikov
2024 - 34 Message to Man International Film Festival Saint Petersburg, Russia
2024 - 70th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany
2024 - Doe of Dawn, Bible Lands Museum. Curator: Rachel Verliebter
2024 - EposI International Art and Culture Film Festival, Tel Aviv
2023 - Decryption, Solo exhibition, Ramat Hasharon Contemporary Art Gallery. Curator: Ravit Harari