Paris, Earth, 2025
Docufiction, Short study, 4 min
A space keeper of collective memory arrives on a desolate Earth in search of a ghost city - the once-legendary capital of France. Is the traveler truly setting foot in Paris? Who knows. Does the location matter? Perhaps not. When the desire to remember is strong enough, it manifests its own reality.
Description:
A short, defamiliarizing piece on humanity's phantom pain.
This study was shot in a single day on a mobile phone.
My hometown has its own Eiffel Tower. It was erected in 2007 at the entrance to a newly opened "Parisian café." The café lasted about ten years before closing down, but the tower remained standing on the street, wobbling and rusting away. In 2025, the city authorities wanted to dismantle it, but the locals voted to keep it - by then, it had already become a local landmark. So the tower was renovated and, a few years ago, relocated to a park as an art installation.
One winter evening, walking home through that park, I found myself surrounded by thick fog. Nothing was visible except the Tower emerging from the clouds. I thought: if I were an intergalactic time traveler unfamiliar with Earth, I would have taken this place for Paris. It also made me think that sometimes the things we hold dear exist in our memory on their own, detached from any specific place, just like this "Eiffel Tower" in the fog, thousands of kilometres away from France.
Author:
Olga Losik
Festivals and Screenings:
- Apr 2026 -- Invisible Cinema Film Festival, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
