The Death of Anima Faven

 Anima Faven-Monroe has searched for meaning and love her entire life, finding hints of both but never achieving either.

I am taking the idea and word “fugue” to fuel the crafting of this film by continuing and deepening the practice established in my first feature cineballet CANON of using musical composition techniques for the macro level of the film and the micro level of the individual characters.

The soundtrack is entirely by Johann Sebastian Bach. His Art of Fugue is the consistent thread for the character identities and the sound world of the film. Interlaced between the fugues are arias and choral works from his various cantatas. By using the two definitions of the word “fugue” I have found a play on words that gives insight into the larger themes of the film as well as aid in the creation of unique character physicalities. In the more well know definition, a “fugue” is a polyphonic musical composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end. The other definition of “fugue” comes from psychiatry which describes a dissociative disorder in which a person forgets who they are and leaves home to create a new life; during the fugue there is no memory of the former life; after recovering there is no memory for events during the dissociative state. Fugue traces back to the Latin word fuga, meaning “flight.” If you’re in a fugue state, it's like you're fleeing from your own identity. Symptoms of this rare condition include amnesia and wandering, typically in an attempt to create a new identity.