Unfinished Business, 2016-2017
single channel video, 18min
In an old Kunstzaal the distinction between past,
present and future is unclear - the time broke down. An
artist intensely resists his last days by remaking fragments
of his life.
Unfinished Business is a short experimental film that offers
a poetic meditation on memory, mortality, and the idea of an
artist’s legacy. Starring the director’s own father as an
aging artist on the verge of death, the film interweaves
fiction with personal history as the protagonist resists his
final days by revisiting and reconstructing fragments of his
life.
Renowned drummer Han Bennink appears as a ghostly guide, his
frenetic drum improvisations seemingly leading the
protagonist toward the afterlife and echoing the desperate
final struggle of a failing body. With its oneiric imagery
and blurred boundaries between dream and reality, Unfinished
Business conjures a liminal space where memory and
imagination entwine, reflecting on what remains unfinished
in both art and life.
excerpt
