FILM REVIEW
'GIRASOLES'
- Directed by Jeff Zorrilla -

Combining in a Dada manner a series of apparently (or not?) dispersed images and actions, “Girasoles” aims to portray a sort of anatomy of the human sensibility, by following simultaneously three points of view focused on different life aspects. The title of this experimental short-film is the Spanish word for “sunflower”, which suggests both the metaphor of the moving perspective, as if the sunflower is an eye which stares at the sky, capturing the beauty of the entire nature, and the director’s choice to construct the cinematic vision during the whole film using the circular model of this specific flower. Technically, Jeff Zorrilla overlaps three kinetic succinct frames in a concentric unitary (mostly black and white) image, by drawing in distinct motions the shape of an eye which continuously stares at the viewer, while reflecting on its cornea, iris and pupil collages of daily random actions.
Even if the Argentinian director does not use an epic scenario, a textual, narrative support to configure his psychedelic dispersed vision combined with some phonograph musical effects sequences, “Girasoles” could be perceived as an ordinary, spontaneously and meaningless experiment which tries to compensate the absence of a message with the façade of an editing technique. In fact, the only special element of this production is the eye-shaped structure’s convention of the perspective, but the lack of connection between the images may suggest that the frames the director used have been chosen arbitrarily. Besides, the influence of Dada aesthetic on Jeff Zorrilla’s short-film, especially the Hans Richter’s “Filmstudie” (in which the German artist also uses the staring eye as a main symbol), risks to turn “Girasoles” just into an old-fashioned, nostalgic experiment which does not revive or reinvent a cinematic formula that intrigued with its bizarreness the first half of the past century.
© 2016 by Bucharest ShortCut CineFest,
Images provided by Stephen Brace and Jason Hargrove,
have not been altered and are used in compliance with CC License.