Winter Light (S)

WINTER LIGHT, filmed in the dawn hours of California winter, explores the endless permutations of light and illumination as representatives of the Demeter-Persephone myth of withdrawal of life through the winter months. Vivaldi's winter concerto. Powerful, cold, a zinging of frost. Pale fog of violet hue rolling in masses over the hills of Sonoma. The dawn hours, the colors, the animals, and the long, lingering deceptive arising of the Divine Son (Sun) through beige and purple reflections on the mist-covered pond. (An entry to the Underworld, where Geryon descended.) Impressionistic, palleted. Opaques and translucencies responding. The veil of the ancient goddess (Demeter) whose daughter had been stolen here. The land of Hades (Pluto), his cold domain, from whence She brings back life on her return (with Her daughter) to the upper world - spring as we know it. I laid out a carefully and elaborately thought-out system of light qualities and movements to represent (in wholly natural images) the retelling of this myth, which is the heart of the Eleusinian mysteries of old. There, the daughter's name is Persephone or Kore.