Promise,
1982
Experimental documentary short
What is promised to us in pornography?
What is Eros whispering, what song is Porne singing?
Porn’s images never satisfy the gaze which suggest in itself an answer to these questions. Through a variety of experimental cinematic devices, Promise has us see porn differently. To avoid using explicit imagery, the visual approach was developed by sublimating nudity and proposing, instead, a set of metaphors.

Shot in SOHO, in the heart of the west end of London, the investigation is tinged with a wry humor. The trade in bodies is suggested by using the rumor of the fruit and vegetable market adjacent to the backstreet sex shops. The saturated primary colors of the neon lights, Eros above the fountain in Piccadilly Circus and the statue of Aphrodite in the British Museum are the real and imagined characters of a red-light district where promises are never kept and where "seeing everything" amounts to seeing nothing.
CH_FlecheSitePB
Film 16 mm, 15 minutes, 25 sec.
CH_FlecheSitePB
Current Affairs subject

Videos

Main collaborators

St Martin’s School of Art
Film Unit Staff:

Bill Foulk
Guy Knight
Malcolm LeGrice
Nick Morris
William Raban

Writing, camera, sound and editing
Philippe Baylaucq

Special thanks to
Sarah Butterfield

Promise,
1982
Writer director
Produced by St-Martin's School of Art , London U.K.
Prizes, nominations and selections
Official selection, Tyneside International Independent Film Festival, 1985.
Broadcast, Channel 4, Great Britain.

Other films

Cinéaste et metteur en espace / Filmmaker Spacemaker