SYNOPSIS

A series of confrontations at a museum illustrates an exclusive economy of images with a complex set of permission structures surrounding who is allowed to look and who is not. In a world where looking and being looked at has become a kind of currency, where “likes” have literally become income, how can we locate or make space for the radical Other in this visual economy of carefully curated bubbles of desired images that suppress the representation of the unrecognizable, the undesirable and the unfathomable while simultaneously repressing the ability of the undesired or unacceptable to participate in the act of looking? How can we represent this subject position of Otherness, which we know to be inherently unspecific and unfamiliar yet at the same time unfixed and mutable without an excessive or inappropriate reliance on any particular known human group? Employing guerilla filmmaking tactics and “poor materials” such as a camera phone, PHARMAKOSIS uses structural, narrative and documentary aspects to articulate the position of the Pharmakos- the figure in ancient greek religion who was ritually expelled from the polis in the belief that such sacrifice would bring about social purification.

SCREENING HISTORY

London International Smartphone Film Festival 2021- Best of Experimental nominee
Mimesis Documentary Festival 2021