KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

Director: Fiona Tan
Camera: Stef Tijdink
Sound: Alex Booij
Editor: Menno Boerema
Production company: Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
Duration: 50 minutes, Colour and black & white
Format: Digi Beta, VHS

This is a documentary based on the Second Commandment: Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

In her documentary, artist and film-maker Fiona Tan confronts the Second Commandment: a prohibition of images. Those who would like to follow the Second Commandment must cease to make images and to worship them. But Tan feels that without images there is no art. Further, Tan sees points of comparison between art and religion. She points to such connections in museums built like cathedrals, in art lovers treating museums as sacred places and in artists in ecstasy over their favorite work of art. From her point of view the extremely high prices paid for works of art reek of idolatry. This in turn is connected with iconoclasm, literally the breaking of images. Tan opposes iconoclasts: she wants her art to be visible. She thinks images do not have power; images are usually abused and misinterpreted. She would like to make the viewer aware of this. The result is a very personal and expressive essay with an exciting paradox: art as the production of sacred icons on the one hand and artists destroying these images on the other hand.

Fiona Tan: 1998 J.C. Van Lanschot Prize for Sculpture, Belgium/ The Netherlands, 1st prize. Prize for the best national debut film, Dutch Film Festival 1997. 1996 Shortlisted Prix de Rome, film / video