Circumplector

In Latin, circumplector means “all-encompassing,” and Solnicki’s three-minute short includes sculpture, architecture, devotional music, a painterly still life, portraiture, and more. In the film’s evocative first image, we see a statue being removed from Notre Dame, just two days, as it happens, before the cathedral was engulfed in flames. So in a certain respect, Solnicki is also expressing his faith in cinema as an embrace, a tool for memorializing human endeavor in the face of uncertainty. The camera cannot see everything, but as Bazin assured us, it loses no part of what it sees. (Viennale)