On The Cusp, Longlist - Personal Project

BEAUTIFICATION

Reinis Spaile

Steve Spencer

A visual essay about the woman model who looks for ways to break out from photography. In the past 2 centuries, beauty has been commodified for consumer culture. Image has been purposefully constructed to arouse fantasies for economic purposes. Beauty has become an object. The viewer enjoys it but fails to question what motivates this fantasy of visual perfection. Instead, the viewer becomes a protected voyeur. The pioneer of BEAUTIFICATION in art is painter Rossetti who constructed a series of romanticized portraits of woman who stares nowhere. He started a cult of portraying ''physical loveliness' in modern art and photography. These images lacked narrative, and the viewer had unlimited access to the unprotected beauty of a woman's body. With this film, we wanted to research the concept of beauty in model and viewer relationships.

Embracing the down–to–earth mindset of his Nordic/Baltic upbringing, Latvian director Reinis Spaile paints visually warm stories that feel pure, personal & relatable.