He Whose Face Shines No Light
Director Andrea Bussmann
Countries Canada, Mexico
Duration 41 min
Synopsis
He Whose Face Shines No Light is a contemplative film that documents the process of a group of elderly MX City residents who have been cast as extras in a fiction feature film. These people have been ‘found’ on the streets of the historic centre, where many of them live difficult lives of poverty, substance abuse, and loneliness. Offered what for them is an incredible amount of money to be in a film, they accept the offer to be characters that mimic the stereotypes people have of them. They aren’t expected to ‘act’, just to wait out the days until they are positioned on the set for camera to roll. But what happens when simultaneously there is another camera documenting this journey, where these people are invited to speak freely to the camera and ‘act’ out a scene?
He Whose Face Shines No Light is a contemplative film that documents the process of a group of elderly MX City residents who have been cast as extras in a fiction feature film. These people have been ‘found’ on the streets of the historic centre, where many of them live difficult lives of poverty, substance abuse, and loneliness. Offered what for them is an incredible amount of money to be in a film, they accept the offer to be characters that mimic the stereotypes people have of them. They aren’t expected to ‘act’, just to wait out the days until they are positioned on the set for camera to roll. But what happens when simultaneously there is another camera documenting this journey, where these people are invited to speak freely to the camera and ‘act’ out a scene?