Intrance
2022 · 4m · United Kingdom
Directed by Diana Olifirova
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tense
For dancer, director and cinematographer Diana Olifirova, her short abstract piece *Intrance* — commissioned by Panasonic and shot between Kyiv and London — captures a city on edge; uneasy, tense, eerily calm.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Four minutes of deliberate formal constraint that refuses to resolve into narrative comfort—Olifirova's betting everything on the tension between image and sound, and most viewers will hate it, which is exactly why it's interesting.
A rigorous essay-film that situates itself in the lineage of structural cinema and sensory abstraction; the editing discipline and tonal architecture here are uncompromising, the kind of work that demands and rewards close looking.
The entire piece hinges on one decision—to let the sound design operate independently from the image rather than serve it—and that single structural choice transforms what could be student work into something genuinely disorienting and alive.
Reviews
Sometimes life has a way of overshadowing art, imbuing it with new and haunting meanings. Shot in early February ahead of the Russian invasion on February 24th, it manages to capture a city on edge; uneasy, tense, eerily calm.