Confessions To The Mirror
Synopsis
Following Cahun’s text, the film includes Cahun’s early and later life and work, including her political propaganda activity and imprisonment in Jersey with her partner Suzanne Malherbe during the Nazi occupation of the island. The tracing of a life is made conscious through the projection of images of the couples' home in Jersey into a domestic London setting.
As a sequel to director Sarah Pucill's previous film 'Magic Mirror' (2013), this film continues her experiment to bring cinematic life to the photographic and written archive of Claude Cahun. In this film Pucill animates re-stagings of Cahun’s black and white self-portrait and still–life photographs with voices from Cahun's text 'Confidences au miroir', collaging and transposing black and white stills and words, into colour and soundscape.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Details
- Year
- 2016
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- 68 mins
- Format
- 16mm
- Director
-
Sarah Pucill
- Producer
- Sarah Pucill
- Editor
- Sarah Pucill; Editing Consultant: Mairead McClean; Online Edit: Konrad Welz
- Director of Photography
- Sarah Pucill
- Sound
- Sound Design: Mairead McClean; Sound Mix and Re-recording: Konrad Welz
- Principal cast
- Karen Leroy-Harris, Kate Hart, and the voices of Carolyn Saint-Pé, Louise Larchbourne, Lucy Briggs-Owen
- Image Correction and Grade
- Fraser Watson
- Lighting and Second Camera
- Fiona Teo Rui Wen, Joel Honeywell, Rina Yang
- Costume
- Jessica Cheetham
- Make-Up
- Jessica Cheetham, Katie Campbell
- Funder
- Arts Council of England
- Financial Assistance
- University of Westminster
Genre
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Sarah Pucill
Sales Company
LUX (Artist distribution)
Waterlow Park CentreDartmouth Park Hill
London
N19 5JF
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Director: Sarah Pucill
Year: 2021
A surreal journey, shot on sumptuous colour 16mm, into a sinister realm of gender display and its consequences. Behind the red curtain of a theatrical stage, a masked woman in a nude bodysuit performs to an invisible but enthusiastic audience. By manipulating male puppets, she acts out the threat of sexual violence. The character manifests the tension between internal anxiety and external sensuality.<br /> Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Experimenta

Director: Sarah Pucill
Year: 2008
I'm not aware of you taking my skin, says the artist's mother to the camera as it zooms in on her eye as close as the lens will allow. Taking My Skin tracks a dialogue between the artist and her mother. Their exchange ranges from narrating the filming process 'in the moment' to relations in an earlier time - 'how long do you think it takes for a child to become separate?' Throughout the journey film spaces continuously dissolve and collapse only to separate again. Sometimes the artist is behind the camera, sometimes the mother, sometimes both simultaneously behind and in front, or neither. Both perform, film, and alternately instruct, position and direct the other. Formally and thematically, the film is an exploration of closeness, of synching, and the threat this poses to the self.

Director: Sarah Pucill
Year: 1999
A woman travels both physically and literally in an interior space of several rooms. The film explores the space between self present cohesion and split subjectivity. The fantastical merges with claustrophobic domestical ritual.