Life Story, a Short Film by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli

In this short film, an original text by philosopher McKenzie Wark is combined with the exploration of her naked body. The story of her life intertwines with that of the Left, both haunted by death.

“Rovinelli’s Life Story is a monologue to camera, sort of. Over the course of the film’s ten minutes, Rovinelli focuses it on Wark’s body. The audio begins and ends with Ne/Re/A’s “In the Dark”, a club track that matches the moves of Rovinelli’s photography: immediately inquisitive, tenderly exposing. Life Story contains a gradual color gradation, a kind of slow siren between a “realistic” image and a super-orange hue. The film has a heartbeat, a heat. It’s a little voyeuristic, but any eroticism is closer to the body as observed-observer, a beat away from Wark’s 2023 book about the NYC techno scene, Raving. There’s pleasure being taken, in photographing a friend, in showing a trans body as a thing with a past and future, in asserting the older female body as a glorious image.” (Frank Falisi, Filmmaker Magazine)