The Friend Constant Beyond Death
A film by Fatma Belkis
Grief work, initially defined by Freud, is redescribed by Derrida as a ‘work of mourning’ that requires an internal idealization of the voice and the body of the lost other, “ideally and quasi-literally devouring them”.
Directed & Produced by
Fatma Belkıs
Director of Photography by
Nasuh Isik, Fatma Belkıs
Mix & Mastering by
Melih Sarigöl
Editing by
Fatma Belkıs
Director’s Statement
The Friend Constant Beyond Death is my work of mourning. It is an attempt to continue the dialogue with my father after his passing. It deals with how one carries a loved one into their practice and how the one that is gone is still present in another’s life.
I used the video camera that my father had bought when I was a kid as a device, like a portal, that enables communication between us, between this world that I live in and the hypothetical world of the deceased. I went through the footage that was taken when my father had cardiac bypass surgery, and I was a teenager going through puberty. I sat in front of the same camera to voice my father, starting with these simultaneous transformations (puberty and heart surgery).
My practice as an artist is inseparable from the death of my father since it is essential for me to produce in dialogue even though the other in question is physically absent.
