The Lunch In Fur
(Le Déjeuner en Fourrure)
2008
7.30 min
16 mm
Colour, sound
Copyright © Ursula Mayer
Mayer's films are conceived as cyclical pictorial structures which concentrate on the fictional character of architecture. Often women step through historical interiors and touch objects and architectural elements. The subject-object relationships in Mayer's films can be described as 'pleasure in looking' and as 'pleasure in being looked at'. Through their movements, the figures engage in a process of seeking their own identity and that of the rooms. Yet the bodies and objects do not become the focus of a voyeuristic (male) fantasy. Instead the deliberately theatrical stagings eschew any clear narrative and our own lines of vision are questioned by the visual breaks caused by the rhythmic editing. In The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Fourrure (2008), Mayer presents a fictional meeting in a late modernist 1960s glasshouse between three historical personalities in their later years: the artist Meret Oppenheim, the singer Josephine Baker and the photographer Dora Maar. These women, in a state of contemplation, recall different events in their lives. Like the film images, the spoken text also follows a woven, ritualized movement, which in turn broaches the question of the psychological constitution of memories. Here, touching objects, as the chess figures, the curtains and the tape recorder, is a seminal moment which causes the protagonists to begin to recall. In The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Fourrure, Mayer clearly delights in reprising the depictions of space and objects between reality and dream of surrealist films, as for example the experimental short film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren. With reference to the history of art and film, the artist drafts multiple images of memory through space and touched objects.
Excerpt: Neuschwander, Simone. Rooms look back, argobooks, Berlin, Kunsthalle Basel
Cast
Meret Oppenheim: Judith Paris
Josephine Baker: Tanya Read
Dora Maar: Mirella D'Angelo
Producer
Ioanna Karavela
Director of photography
David Rom
Editor
Ursula Mayer
Konrad Welz
Costume stylist
Margaret Andrew
Make-up
Fiona Tanner
Sound recordist
Nigel Albermaniche
Props
Martin Fletcher
Props master
Natalie Allan
Assistant director
Stuart Parkins
Steadycam Operator
Peter Murra
Focus Puller
Sam Rawlings
Clapper loader
Gareth Coop
Camera trainee
Leighton Spence
Gaffer
Frank Usher
Lighting assistant
Gareth Brough
Mark Bayley
Set photography
Tim Brotherton
Production assistants
Jody Vandenburg
Kylie Rea
Thanks to:
Giorgio Fasol
Valentino Barbierato
Valerioano D'Urbano
Alfred Mayer
Arts Council England
BKA, Vienna