Lonely Cowboys
'Lonely Cowboys (Maligned)' deals with remnant recollections and symbolic scars from destructive dependencies on lost loves, friends and family. Two bodies – male and female – physically similar and gender ambiguous, intertwined and twinned, form a temporal self portrait. In the initial slow right movement, details feature like still-lives that speak of our innate desire to capture time:
A pinned butterfly of our obsession with ephemeral values like youth and beauty. Statuettes of a deer (prey) and a bear (predator) of power and surrender, and of the loss of control we must suffer to sustain relationships.
In the final scene the male protagonist is spewing beads, alluding to well-known mythological imagery of antique and pre-historic deities, such as Chloris ‘from whose lips rose petals fell’ in an act of love. This action carries similar significance in Central Pacific imagery where the beads are replaced by pearls, as well as in Nordic heathen beliefs where the symbiotic yin-and-yang union of goddess Freja and god Frö (transl. ‘seed’) symbolizes the abundance and cyclic renewal of nature.
Director - Åsa Riton
Cinematography - Sophie Winqvist
Editing - Åsa Riton
Sound - The Knife 'Nedsvartning'