Tereza Buskova, Wedding Rituals, 2007
Video installation. Installation dimensions variable, video: 9 min 14 sec
Performed by Zoe Simon, Joni Livinson, Vangelis Legakis
Sound by Bela Emerson
Courtesy the David and Indrė Roberts Collection
Growing up in Prague, Tereza Buskova was influenced by the Czechoslovak New Wave, which started there from the early 1960s. The New Wave filmmakers used dark humour and non-professional actors, partly in opposition to the Social Realist cinema of the 1950s. Being shot on Super 8, the slow movement of the performers combined with the jerky motion of the camera creates a sense of the supernatural and a prevailing undertone of sexual freedom. These characteristics also conjure up experimental and artist filmmakers of the same era in New York’s counterculture; the likes of Shirley Clarke, Andy Warhol and Maya Deren.¹
1 Maxa Zoller, 'Wedding Rituals', 2007, terezabuskova.com and Tereza Buskova, in discussion with author, September 2020
Maya Deren’s dream-like films combine ethnography with choreography. In her work Meditation on Violence 'she is the camera, she’s moving, she’s breathing in relation to this dancer.'² There is much in common here with how Buskova views her own presence in Wedding Rituals.
2 Stan Brakhage quoted in Georgia Korossi, 'Maya Deren Meshes of the Afternoon', BFI. Available at www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/maya-deren-meshes-of-the-afternoon, 2020.
Buskova’s reference points are likewise more personal: 'I felt particularly drawn to ambiguous experimental films full of magic realism. My favourite of all was Jaromir Jires’ film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), which was an adaptation of a novel by Surrealist Czech writer Vitezslav Nezval, written in 1935. The story isn’t clearly defined, but through poetically visual images the viewer drifts between the subconscious and the reality of a young woman entering her adolescence – the loss of Valerie’s innocence. There is a similarity with Wedding Rituals. It is a semi-biographical work through which I have unconsciously re-told the dark layers of my first marriage, which I portrayed through symbolism.'³
3 Tereza Buskova, in discussion with author, September 2020
In Wedding Rituals a half-naked woman partly covered in white body paint is revealed adorned with bright red lips and a richly decorated folk skirt. She is surrounded by figures representing a cockerel and a rabbit with beautiful hand-made props. What follows is a sequence of tableaux vivants, enacting rituals; there is the slightly awkward cupping of a breast and the dance scene which looks like a parade of long, stretched out legs. It all culminates once the woman is made to sit still, her neck resting on a pedestal stand, in order to have a headdress placed on her by two masked men. This gesture is the pinnacle of traditional Slavic wedding rituals, symbolising the bride’s tie to her husband. Upon leaving her parents’ house the bride isn’t allowed to walk on the earth, due to potentially encountering bad spirits, instead being transported by a vehicle like a carriage. Sometimes bridesmaids would dress up as the bride to confuse the spirits, protecting the bride in her transitional and vulnerable state. Perhaps this is why, ‘en route’, the woman meets the figures dressed as animals – it alludes to a tale from English folklore, where women accused of witchcraft would escape their hunters by transforming into a hare.⁴
4 Insight from Zoe Simon in correspondence with the author, September 2020
Haunting and trance-like, the sounds and movements in the work are examples of Buskova letting others interpret her vision. The central character is enacted by Zoe Simon, who Buskova cites as her muse. Since Wedding Rituals they have gone on to work together frequently. When the work was shot the set was silent, a process Simon describes as heightening the feeling of being part of a ritual, in that the actors slowly added improvised movements to the tableaux vivants accompanied only by the rustling of props and noises from the camera. Wedding Rituals also marks another first-time collaboration that grew into a recurring partnership — with cellist Bela Emerson who created the mesmerizing and melancholic score. Upon completion Emerson spent several days watching the film on loop to become fully immersed in the imagery and colours before playing along to the film in several takes. The result is the intricately layered set of string arrangements.
It is a collaborative process that stirs up folkloric magic in a new concoction, bubbling with sexual tension and mythical tales. Whilst being held back by the headdress, the sexuality and mystique of the bride can never be quite contained by the men that move around her, and the film exudes a sense of defiant freedom.