PORTRAIT OF ZHIZI HAO AS H-A-O

 

Portrait of Zhizi Hao as H-A-0, 2019
43’20’’ Black and White with Sound
(Video above is a 1 minute excerpt)

 
 

This 43 minutes long portrait of Zhizi Hao, who acted in my first short semi-fictional film “Akrobat”, came out when I was trying to find a way to interview the characters I create, without asking them any questions. Hao is wearing the exact clothes he was wearing in the film, including the eye cover, without having any clue about what was expecting him in the next hour. When I started rolling and left the room, I had no idea either.

After the first fifteen minutes, where he and I get used to the silence and the uncomfortable formality of our "experiment”, he starts talking to himself, without knowing if I was even in the room or not. It was fascinating for me to watch his internal journey, as a consequence of this very primitive “being watched without seeing” game, starting from daily worries, reaching his emotions about his mother’s birthday.

Image and Sound by Can Köroğlu