Demon

Heinz Emigholz
1977-09-22

5
29 min

DEMON, subtitled „The Translation of Stéphane Mallarmé´s THE DEMON OF ANALOGY“, includes the Mallarmé text, spoken by various performers in its original French version, and in English and German as well. Most of the shots in the film are one word long. In the first scene, three women sit on chairs placed in the foreground of a room and a corps of men stands behind them, spread out over the rest of the space. The woman who is seated in the middle of the three speaks the first word of the Mallarmé text in her particular language with the men arranged behind her; there is a cut, another woman sits in the middle, speaking the first word of the text in her, different language with the men in a new arrangement behind her, cut, another in her language, then back to the first for the next word of the text. From this point on although the poem progresses forward in all three languages the order of shots - French word, English word, German word, doesn´t remain fixed.