Alessandra Corona Producer, Director
Alessandra Corona Key Cast
Maria Vittoria Villa Key Cast
Brian Castillo Key Cast
Melissa Anderson Key Cast
Emily Paige Anderson Key Cast
Andy Santana Key Cast
Steven Pisano Director of Photography
Ennio Madau Editor
Thomas Lentakis Original Music
By Ramtin Ebrahimi
Almost all films that are intended to use a cinematic language other than the common ones include complexities that can be the result of the unfamiliarity of the audience with his new style, as meaning is supposed to be expressed through unconventional means. Many films put both of these together, meaning that they use linguistic complexities and convey a complex subject matter that may even remain as ambiguous everywhere. Common cinematic languages allow the artist to express the desired subject matter transparently and at the same time allow the viewer to grasp the subject very fast. But when dialogue is removed from a film, as well as characters, storytelling, and conventional location and set design are put aside, the filmmaker intends to use a more complex, obscure style to express the ideas.
In the short film Labyrinth by Alessandra Corona, we are faced with such an effect: in this film, almost all the usual possibilities of storytelling in short films are ignored, and the filmmaker has tried to present and advance the subject matter solely through the use of dance and dancers. A major challenge for any filmmaker is to try to establish a connection with the audience solely through visual signs and symbols. These signs and symbols in the case of Labyrinth are all movements that we see from the dancers. By distancing from common and ordinary spaces, the filmmaker urges us to pay attention to something more important: all the details of the dancers' movements, the arrangement of the path they take, every twist and turn they give to their body… and basically, their body. The body in this film is intended to be the narrator of everything we usually hear as dialogue or monologue. Here, the body not only becomes important but also becomes the subject itself.
At the beginning of the film, we see six dancers dressed in black, each wearing a mask. The fact that they have masks on their faces and are uniformly dressed in black from the outset makes us think that they are supposed to be symbols of society, and without focusing on individuality, we are supposed to be on one side. What does having a black color signify? The most common meaning of black is a sign of mourning. Mourning, death, and of course darkness itself. On the other hand, black can also be a symbol of power. In choosing black as a color, the filmmaker puts contradictory meanings together or can be said to present them hand in hand. That is, while the black-clad dancers can be mournful, they can also rely on their power: A power that seems to flow from within their dance. Another point that attracts the viewer's attention from the very beginning is that these dancers are moving inside an enclosed environment. Although we are in an open space in the city, these dancers themselves are dancing within an environment surrounded by concrete columns. The very choice of location and placing the dancers within this hypothetical enclosure somehow represents the dancers' determination to break out of the enclosed space, break the frame, and become free. These movements, one thinks, are meant to be a protest against current conditions; a protest that is supposed to be conveyed through body language and dance.
We are almost in the middle of the film where two people separate from this group. A man and a woman who seem to have a clearer identity compared to that group now. The filmmaker manages to develop these two characters out of the the group without using dialogues or even showing the actors' faces, and separates them from the group in front of us. Through parallel editing, we see these man and woman simultaneously trying to break out of the concrete surrounding. What was previously just symbolic, the dancing of this group within an enclosed but open environment, becomes a reality and we actually see the man and woman banging their feet against the concrete wall, putting their hands on it, and trying not only to break out. but also to free themselves from the other members of the group. This desire for freedom that is raised in the middle part of the film is one of the important features that shows the filmmaker is fluent in the cinematic language he uses. He introduces the space to us at first, introduces the characters, creates the group, and portrays their uniformity, and now he chooses the main characters from among the group and introduces them to us and advances the issue: breaking away from the group, from the community, from the environment.
Therefore, the main theme of the film, which has been emphasized from the beginning and is now raised differently, is freedom. Liberation. The fact that every group, in any society, strives to be free but there are those from within who want to be free from that group itself. The struggle for freedom has many complex forms, and Alessandra Corona shows us that this struggle for freedom can be examined in the form of dance. From the middle of the film, even the dancers who were supposed to reach freedom by fighting against the environment play the role of an obstacle to the freedom of the man and woman.
Then we return to the group and watch the man and woman. We have witnessed a moment of their individual efforts to separate from the group, and now we are witnessing their presence in the group again through intelligent back-and-forth movements. From here on, it seems that their presence in the group is not out of consent and solidarity, but out of necessity. The film only leaves us with the question that, are people who play a role in a group fully satisfied or are we sometimes present in a group only because we cannot break away from it?
The dancers' efforts to pull the couple inside with their hand movements are practically a seal of approval for the idea that even though a group may be pursuing its own freedom, it can draw fences for its members. Although the film avoids presenting a direct message, it can be imagined that the central meaning of the film is about individuality in a world where even small groups hinder the crystallization and liberation of their members. Labyrinth is one of those short films that can keep the viewer's mind occupied for a long time. What is our role, what do we do in a group, and how can we break away from the crowds and society?