Isiah Medina Introduces His Film "idizwadidiz"

Isiah Medina's idizwadidiz (2017) is exclusively showing August 29 – September 28, 2018 on MUBI in most countries in the world as part of the series Canada's Next Generation.

The rose is red.

The rose is not red.

The rose is not an elephant.

The rose is a rose.

It is what it is.

Is it?

Let's try again: the law is…the law. We know when one says that the law is the law, there is perhaps a violent excess implied. For example, there is a murder by the police. The phrase ‘the law is the law’ can have the effect of an essential violence or unfairness in the law itself.

A woman is…a woman. This declaration of identity is itself destabilized as 'woman' on either end can re-determine, via a list of qualities, what is explicated or abbreviated as ‘woman.’ Even without a list of qualities, the "..." itself presents what is at stake when one identifies with itself.

If we say A=A, it is = it is, we do not have the same effect. But, A is…A is quite different. Why? It’s because we added time, and subtracted eternity.

A movie is…a movie is a lot different from movie=movie. There are times where it is more exciting to declare, to make an axiom, and say movie=movie. As if yes, we know what a movie is. But sometimes there’s a wait and see approach, that says movies are…movies. But then again, this approach sometimes leads to stagnation, too much trust in the “…” to resolve itself.

In this movie I move from the “=” to the “…” and back, and forth, in relation to different appearances in the world.

When you edit a movie, you can look at rushes and slide the ‘it’ frame besides the ‘is’ frame, and that next to the ‘what’ frame…and then you export it and it is what it is may appear as idizwadidiz. But now the idizwadidiz is imported back into the timeline, and is itself cut. 

So we see that, a one is a one, a woman is a woman, a circle is a circle, blue is blue, a tree is a tree, a frame is a frame, the world is the world...

We also see a circle is green, a circle is a head, a head is not a body, a cut is a frame, a frame is a transition, a one is not a multiple, et cetera is et cetera, the rose is an elephant, reality is a movie, thinking is being…

It is what it is is not idizwadidiz…

I wanted to make, as Alexandre Galmard wonderfully put it, “textless punctuation”—OK, let’s lose the rose, the red…  Can we see transitions without shots to transit from? And then do these punctuation marks themselves become, in a way, a rose, a red—can we play with these marks themselves? Like those classic motion studies, where someone would walk through a grid, or there is maybe a bow and arrow, and an arrow flies through. Let’s lose the body, and the arrow, let’s study the ‘motion’ of the conditions of the motion study itself. The possibility of motion, of change, in the very conditions of motion. Movies are so often the “…”. Can we get closer to the “=”?

More investigations are required. We’ll see when the time comes, or when time is itself thrown away. Maybe in the future.