Vigil 2017

Directed by Tracey Moffatt

Close-up stills of white Hollywood stars – including Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, looking aghast and horrified – are intercut with news shots of boats crowded with refugees. Peering through slatted blinds and homing in with binoculars, the wide-eyed and troubled movie characters seem to survey crowded decks. The images of the refugees are manipulated, cropped, recoloured, sometimes reduced to almost abstract blobs. Vigil is short, terse and, with its increasing tempo, extremely powerful. The more you watch, the worse it gets. Stuck in their roles and behind their windows, the stars act out their emotions. Meanwhile, genuine human misery goes on, visibly manipulated for our consumption.