Sarah Pucill is a filmmaker and photographer who explores a sense of self in her work. The main features of her work look into mortality and the conventional filmmaking process. Pucill makes a lot of her films in simple places/rooms where she creates and enters different and new realms. Her work explores the representation of the feminine, queer or the dead. Her work is very strange and is very much surrealist works but I think this is what makes her work so much more interesting and captivating. Pucill’s first feature length production Magic Mirror explores the work  of Claude Cahun through her images as well as her writing from Cahun’s book Aveux non avenus (Confessions Denied, 1930). I like the idea of this as Pucill has basically taken Cahun’s work, restaged it and added some more context to it from Cahun’s own words in her book. I feel that this is a really great way to learn more about Cahun and to really understand the meaning behind her work as well as possibly getting an insight into the style of Pucill and her methods of film and photography.

Magic Mirror trailer: http://www.sarahpucill.co.uk/films/magic-mirror/

As I didn’t have time to watch the entirety of Pucill’s film Magic Mirror, I just watched the trailer but still found it to be very helpful and intriguing. I also think that the entire film can only be seen in the many exhibitions that it has been shown at. Something about this film really interested me and I really like that Pucill has mixed film with photography, something that I have done in the past and am making a constant link between in my own photographic work. I think that this way of bringing Cahun’s images to life more with her own words has really given me a clearer understanding of the context of her work and her constant thoughts on mortality. I like how strange and surrealist the trailer is, it really captivates me and makes me want to watch on as well as the voiceover from Pucill reciting extracts from Cahun’s book Aveux non avenue. The thing that  I’m struggling with this is that at what point does this become Pucill’s original work as the re-staged positions and images that she has created were Cahun’s and the voiceover was also extracts from Cahun’s own book. I do really like the idea of taking inspiration from other artists work and bringing your own twist to it and Pucill’s work is great but it is just re-staged versions of Cahun’s own images. Obviously no ones images can be as good or as unique as Cahun’s and her work really does stand out to me but I do like Pucill’s interpretation and recreations of it. I like the way Pucill looks in her images and really gets into the characters that Cahun has created, something that I can take inspiration from and work on in my own images.