O Fortuna

2007 · 14 min

Video V of Cartmell's unfinished series Shipwreck Theory. Part of Shipwreck Theory II (The Writing) A tale of Cartmell’s friendship with Mickus, sung up at the camp, the island getaway, the last mother, the picture divided as they were not, the lines of flight scrolling until Montaigne dies and then returns in order to birth the project of self-portraiture. The filmmaker practices death. Mike’s obsession with chiamatic doubling continues in the picture’s split, even as he heals it by running his touching comrade ode across it. “Even in your dying, and despite my state of wreckage, I was accruing benefits, coming closer than I had ever been to death, your death, watching you sink from the safety of the shore, and soaking up the knowledge to be had, the macabre poetry of it.”

Directed by Mike Cartmell