Confessions to the Mirror

Taking the text of Jersey-based surrealist Claude Cahun's incomplete personal memoir as its inspiration, this successor to Sarah Pucill's Magic Mirror, is a sumptuous and passionate re-imagining of the artist's life. It moves from childhood, through her politicisation and defiant activism, to her eventual imprisonment with her partner, Suzanne Malherbe, at the hands of the occupying Nazis force, along with the destruction of many of her precious photographic works. Pucill seeks to redress this violence against Cahun's legacy by meticulously recreating vignettes and scenarios that trace her artistic practice, her lesbian relationship and her resistance to the occupation. She employs sound, movement and colour to connect Cahun's personal yet radical practices with the themes and techniques of her own image making. Part-love letter to the artist, Confessions to the Mirror reveals the power of art as human communication, within in the most repressive of circumstances. (London Film Festival)