Janis Klimanovs Description

"Slothful dreams"

Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins from The Bible. It is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. Often regarded as mere laziness, but actually can be more accurately translated as apathy. Apathetic person do not care about doing their duties that are supposed to be done.

"Slothful dreams" is a visualization of a dream what reflects to the sloth sin. A tired man with a big bushy beard stands in the bathroom and looks at himself in a mirror. He feels ugly. He wants to shave the beard but he is too shiftless and lazy to do it. He takes off his shirt looks around and suddenly instead of taking a razor he has an idea to try to shave the beard off with his nails and finger tips. In the same moment he is realizing that by touching his face the finger tips are becoming raiser blade sharp as well as the nails.

He puts them towards his face and it works. He can do everything, he starts with cutting his bush on chin, trimming cheeks and finishing with the mustache in the final. In a certain point when the job is almost done he becomes more and more passionate about the possibility to get rid of the beard. He admires him self, touches his freshly shaved cheeks and all around the face, almost forgetting about the raiser sharp nails and finger tips. He starts to touch his head. He freezes in front of the mirror from a shocking thought that he has almost shaved off all his hair. In the same moment he awakes from a sleep in a different space. He understands that his beard and also the hair is still there and he had a bad dream. And still he needs to shave.

"Slothful dreams" is a one minute video sequence that has been made of around one and a half thousand photographs captured with a digital photo camera. Photographs are shot in a small room, in low light conditions. Frames are captured in a row, one after another by creating a stop motion sequence. Combination of all necessary frames for the outcome result were selected in the editing part. The story line became more clear during the process and when it was actually done. Photos are converted to black and white because color is not important tool for the story.

The video sequence was created in an experimental process as a playful visualization about a recent dream. Dreams are our subconsciousness, that plays a big role in our daily life, sometimes when we dream, we might remember the last bits of it in the next morning. And sometimes we have the will to think about our dreams and maybe try to translate them. The concept of the short video is not based on anything else than just the dream it self. In a certain point of the realization process the idea started to develop in another stage from a form of photo serie to a short moving image sequence. The surreal and absurd situation contrasts with a dash of humor within the story line where our reality goes hand by hand with our dreams. The dream translated it self during the editing process and the short storyline established towards laziness and unreal wish theme what reflects to the slothful sin about avoidance of work.

Video: http://vimeo.com/22562605