If Not

Director: Cynthia Madansky
Music: Cenk Ergün
16 mm ◊ 15 min.

If Not, is at once in conversation with and an unofficial outlier of the Feminist Writers Series that Cynthia Madansky would shortly begin in earnest in following years, with work like Viva Água (2015), Grace + Gravity (2017), and KG (2018). A film inspired by text and voice but entirely devoid of both, this sensuous, meditation on love draws inspiration from Anne Carson’s landmark translation of writing by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, published in 2002 as "If Not, Winter". Shot at the Greek ruins of Ephesus in Turkey, in grainy black and white 16mm, If Not, is a film in which touch and sensuality are foregrounded, both in terms of the gestures we see, but also the tactile, material approach to the medium itself—ranging from passages of raw hand-processing but also the direct manipulation of the film strip itself. The avant-garde nature of the piece is accompanied by an experimental score by Cenk Ergün.