Duration: 9:45
As You Desire Me is a meditation on the city of Rome when the Iraq War was declared. Three city landscapes represent time in the haunting gap between the cold and barren landscape, and the people who traverse it. The three-channel film event uses surrealistic characters in real settings as a way to address sorrow and catastrophe. One of the components of the film is the poem, Empire of Dreams by Charles Simic.
Empire of Dreams
By Charles Simic
On the first page of my dreambook
It’s always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The storefronts gutted.
I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn’t be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of Halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.
Directed By
Maureen Selwood
Animation by
Maureen Selwood and Maria Vasilkovksy
Composer
Anna Oxygen