Written & Directed by Michèle Lemieux
Produced by Christine Noël
A short film made using pinscreen animation, The Painting explores the 1652 portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria by Velázquez. Michèle Lemieux demonstrates incredible mastery of the pinscreen, playing with shadow and light to evoke the tragic fate of Mariana, who was married to her uncle at the age of 14. Both painful and tender, this experimental work is a poem of a film: a meditation on the brutality of institutionalized incest and art’s power to capture the soul.