“The Balance of Sizes”, 2021, experimental film, duration: 11 min.
An elderly patient and his devoted nurse mysteriously disappear from a nursing hospital. In the experimental film “The Balance of Sizes” (2021), the narrator of the story is a security guard. He tells a strange story, confessing that he was probably the last person to see the old man on his computer screen, in recorded images taken by hospital security cameras. It is an interpretation of the story “The Elephant Vanishes” (1985) by Haruki Murakami.
An artist invited members of staff at Šiauliai Long-Term Care and Geriatric Centre to collaborate in this art project. The staff took pictures of their daily work environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their photographic record became the basis for the plot of the film, and the objects they documented in the hospital setting turned into a framework for the reincarnation of the film’s characters.
The artist’s mother treated patients for many years in this popular nursing hospital. Therefore, the film is a mark of the artist’s gratitude to her mother, and to other workers in the health-care sector.
kristina inčiūraitė 