Heidi Kumao
US filmmaker
biography
participant in
CologneOFF V – 5th Cologne Online Film Festival 2009
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Video title.
Hole in the Floor, 2008, 7:00
synopsis
This surreal, stop-motion short features a young woman who rips up her bedroom floorboards in order to bury a box. Her mission is thwarted by the discovery of an eerie and familiar world on the floor below her. From this hole, she unearths a giant root and witnesses a similarly dressed older woman (herself in the future? her mother?) dancing with a male partner, then arguing. Further physical excavation becomes a personal excavation as she digs up fragments of her past and future. These objects, hauled up from the netherworld, magically coalesce into a dark and unsettling sight. White-gloved hands massage, probe, and caress the dead woman’s body then remove evidence of its decay. The hands quickly exit the scene, leaving the young woman with a difficult situation to explain to the person knocking on the door.