The work was open for online viewing between December 20 – January 6.
“The Dark, Debra” (00:03:33) by Dina Yanni, Austria, 2019
Debra Paget is sad, lonely and can’t stop worrying. Will she ultimately have to face her own ghosts?
”The Dark, Debra” references Michael Robinson’s ”The Dark, Krystle“ (2013) and develops a related narrative of a woman in a state of unrest and seclusion. Through digital editing and image modification, Debra Paget – cast in a supporting role in the original sample – is featured as the sole character. Part experimental fiction, part remake, supercut and music video, ”The Dark, Debra“ seeks to reveal the fixed concepts applied to Debra Paget’s Hollywood persona and to produce more ambiguous notions of identity, intention and subversion.
Director Statement
The remix of an existing work contradicts the idea that the meaning of this work is fixed forever and can only exist in one context. Instead, remix films circulate alternative narratives of popular works, all the while being suspicious of conventions and authorities.
Experimental filmmaking is the excitement of possibilities: the experiment in it, however, is not the true objective, it is rather the means to disconfirm your ideas and to radically alter your perspective.
Director Bio
Dina Yanni is a video artist and researcher whose work is heavily influenced by popular culture and its politics, digital image manipulation, and critical theory. Through compilation and analysis of existing footage, experimental editing and/or data corruption, Yanni strives to reveal, reevaluate and reframe power structures discovered in the original materials. She is also a political scientist and publishes theory-based writing around the very same themes that inform her video work: the study of power structures behind visual representations and possibilities for counter-narratives. Dina Yanni holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Film Production. Her work has been exhibited at experimental film and video art festivals internationally.
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
