memento mori (2022)

Memento Mori is a short film that lends the title from the same Latin phrase whose closest translation is that of “Remember you must die”, a philosophy that promotes the reflection on death not as a ghoulish practice but rather as an inspiration to truly live.

It is a study of light and shadows, framing and composition with no clear narrative a visual essay on silence and the passing of time, which has been my main thematic focus and the common thread in all individual projects I have developed over the last three years. Its logline, you too shall pass, is a play on the timely saying “This too shall pass” whose sentence subject has been changed from one referring to a temporary condition or situation to that of the human existence as a whole, implying the ephemerality of the same, both in the individual and the collective sense.

This short explores architecture as the physical embodiment of the title and logline In contrast with the open nature, buildings are places where history is so incredibly tangible. The people who built said spaces did indeed live, and breathe, and felt, and thought, and died, just as we have and will. And the generations that are yet to come will stand in these exact places and think the same about us a notion that is further amplified when these spaces are presented to us deprived of the anthropoid presence besides being filmed digitally yet black and white, further allowing for an accentuated blend between past and future.

I felt compelled to create a project with this philosophy as the result of the last two years where, in a previous world where everything was seen as mundane and life was carried out in a seemingly automatic way, we were suddenly forcefully introduced to a reminder of our fragility and how insubstantial we are as a life form.

Memento Mori is relevant in the way that it serves as an aide memoir of that statement.