City Dusk: Between Daydream and Nightmare Synopsis The film unfolds the uncanny world hidden behind the paintings of Jerusalem artist Talia Trainin. My camera pans through her urban landscapes, creating a tale of silent cities, distant childhood memories, gloomy nights, lonely alleys and imposing buildings from foreign European cities. Interlaced with associations, poems and writings from contemporary and more distant periods, the film penetrates into her unsettling images, rendering the dramatic events of this and of the previous century. In the words of Trainin, "the lens unfolds x ray images, excavating nostalgia, penetrating the opacity of past and present. It unfurls the nightmarish debris of centuries that accumulates as irresoluble, asphyxiating wreckage. In this visual archeology of the mind successive temporal layers meet, defying linear time." And still, as the audience becomes a witness of the cities' past splendour, and of the scars inflicted upon them by wars and massacres, a new dawn rises, awakening a glimpse of hope. Elena Canetti, film director REVIEW from Art Newspaper "El Punto de las Artes" (Madrid, January 2006) Talia Trainin:: Cities between Daydream and Nightmare These urban landscapes by Talia Trainin (New York, 1960) have the hypnotic power that emanates from pain, from mystery, and from nostalgia. Her watercolours are wisps of cities that could be many or one, sharing the shadows of the night and the wounds of so many wars: Paris 1940, Berlin 1945, London 1940, New York 2001, without forgetting Madrid, Guernica… Devastation, horror, blood, and angels. A destruction expressed through black strokes, tortuous and twisted, lit only by sinister red blotches and clouds of whitish smoke. Desolate portrait of cities unhinged by irrationality, where the rubble does not know the causes of so much suffering. Wars and also terror attacks. Always, here and there, survivors of massacres that could belong to any time and place. They wander in solitude, dragging their tired footsteps over the wreckage of what used to be their homes, seeking perhaps a trace of life that might return the hope of what is lost. Deep, intense, and wounding brush strokes that pierce through the soul with a universal feeling of loss that has no flag or homeland and serves to remind us of our immense fragility. Talia Trainin also entraps us with her melancholy portraits of cities with beautiful but cold buildings, the streets empty of passers-by, sheltered by the night that bathes all with its dark cloak. Her tortuous drawing enhances the sense of solitude and draws us closer to agitation and to madness. . . . "City Dusk, between Daydream and Nightmare" is the lucid description of an artist who lives and feels the cold, powerful throb of each stone and halts to listen to its story, at times terrible but also so seductive. . . Who can pass by without stopping? Charo Sanchez Lopez CREDITS Film/Video Original Title: "City Dusk: Between Daydream and Nightmare" Spanish Title: "Penumbra de las Ciudades: Entre ensueño y pesadilla" Director/Producer: Elena Canetti Script: Talia Trainin and Elena Canetti Camera/Editor: Elena Canetti Music: Daniel Akiva Narration: John Landau and Elena Canetti Nationality of Film: Israel Date of Completion: 2006 Running Time: 13' 30" Subtitled: Yes Language of Subtitles: English and Spanish Original Format: MiniDV Exhibition Format: Beta SP or DVD or VHS Distributors: Elena Canetti and Talia Trainin Screenings: Premiere- Centro Cultural Galileo, Madrid – at the opening of Talia’s exhibition