Letter from New York City

So., 4. Mai, 22:19

Dear Helga Fanderl,

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Emma. I saw your short films at Anthology a few
weeks ago, and I wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed them.
I watched Constellations with one person I love and three strangers. A friend of mine who lives in
Barcelona told me her sister would be in New York, and that we two should meet. Ana (the
traveling sister) invited two writer friends, and I invited my boyfriend Adam along. When the five
of us convened at Anthology, Ana nervously exclaimed, “thank you for arranging this date!” and we
quietly filed into the theater together.

It felt fitting to watch your films – which are warm, inviting, intimate, and attentive –
with one person I know well to my left, and one I was just meeting to my right. I felt each short film was
greeting me, waking me to a world I knew. The glimmer of apartment buildings across water, the
crowning branches of a persimmon tree seen from below, or the dog in shimmering water, long as
an eel. Your gestures, the tips of painted fingernails just touching, or a woman folding her body to
kiss a man seated at a picnic, were fond and familiar (like memories of my own). I noticed my own
back curving to a V, stretching forward in my seat to focus all my attention – an attempt to mimic
your precision. To look as you do.

I found other moments to be entirely unfamiliar and beguiling. The peacock’s flickering turns
captivated me, as did the flaring orange peels of tulips after being submerged in the black-and-white
tunnel. A return to life and all that blooms. Just when I thought a tree branch was the same one I
gazed at in the morning, or an apple the same I sliced for lunch, I saw something that shifted my
perception so finely – a slight pivot like one watery flick of the dog’s tail.

And there was real glee to swiveling my head around as you changed the film, hearing Adam
whisper “so good,” or catching Ana’s eye, again new to me, but now sharing all of the joyful images
we’d seen (irises, trampolines, a kiss, a fuchsia blouse on the beach).
I hope you won’t mind this long note. Thank you for these films.

With admiration,
Emma

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This post was written by Helga Fanderl