Light Escapes Through the Intervals by Tasaka Naoko

This year´s short film competition at Rotterdam´s international film festival has been completely dominated by experimental pieces. Throughout the last few days I saw my fair share of time lapse, distortions, overexposures, textures and frontal nudity shots. I even saw a guy being slowly covered in bees. No matter how creative and original a filmmaker or artist tries to be, this sort of thing is bound to get somewhat repetitive and slightly annoying.

There are exceptions though. And few more interesting then Tasaka Noako´s Light Escapes Through the Intervals. This graduation film experiment stands out, above all, due to the perfect balance between two key factors overlooked by most of the rest of the competitors: image and sound.

Admittedly, the film is Tasaka Naoko´s own search for ways to express ideas she cannot put into words. Through the use of a breathtaking soundtrack, that jumps from instrumental surf rock to industrial mechanical drone sounds, she managed to connect images that otherwise would not form a solid basis for such vagrancies.

The slow motion pace is delightful, giving the audience the impression the life and soul of the piece resides as much in the process as in the final objective.

Ultimately, Light Escapes Through Intervals is a enchanting and relaxing voyage into a personal abstract line of though, that works perfectly both conceptually and in practice.

by Fernando Vasquez