Deborah S. Phillips

The adventure of Melissa and Gustavo starts aboard a red cargo ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It takes them from Brazil to Berlin, a city of perpetual movement, where the old constantly has to give space to the new. The couple finds a home and transforms it into the center of their own universe. As time passes and seasons change, life and cinema become interchangeable and their apartment evolves into an ever-changing stage, where friends are invited to play their own roles and reality and fiction merge. Until one day a cosmic portal appears in their home, opening connections between the past, the present and the future.

Part 4 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

Part 1 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

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After a tough time, a little bit of lightness is called for itself. A search for beauty in the world around me. (Deborah S. Phillips)

A 35 mm. experimental film.

My mother, Carol Frieda Herman P. Hirsch, Chaya bas Moshe ve Yehudit, died on June 23, 2022, at home, the way she wanted her last weeks to be. Self-determined, surrounded by majestic trees outside the windows, with birds chirping in the background. With her books in shelves nearby. Even when she lacked the energy to read, she was glad to have those books near her. And she enjoyed the smells of good food, her music and other simple things as long as it was possible. The choice to use film material that was way past its sell-by date corresponds with how, as one approaches the end of one’s life, things fall apart, gradually. A tribute.

Short by Deborah Phillips.

My (former) neighbour, Samer is a trained translator & interpreter between Arabic and Chinese & would like to work as such. A visual exploration of the gap between what systems expect & reality & a human stuck in between. Negative developed in black tea.

Completed in 2024. 40 sec, Super 8

Set in the near future, a collective of queer-feminist superhero*ines make use of their different identities, backgrounds and experiences to fight back against sexual and gender-based violence – a fusion of science, technology, magic, and ritual. Clashes and conflicts arise as they negotiate and try to come to a consensus on their aim of disrupting toxic hierarchies. The project is currently in post-production.

A third of a film-book-installation project. Three times fallen, three times restarted, three legs, three ends. The story of Jewish immigration.

Close-up cinema in London asked people who have shown films there in the last years whether they wanted to make a short film for their anniversary. So I gave their name some thought, which took me to words of proximity in different languages...

In "Mosaïc", the Islamic and Jewish decorative and architectural motifs are based on images, drawings and photographs of intercultural places: Samarkand, Bukhara, Fez, Casablanca, Andalusia, Isfahan, Cairo, Istanbul...

«71» is guided by impressions and feelings of an artist during shooting: a feeling of absurdity that comes when one travels to the back of beyond without ever reaching anywhere.

A path doesn't always go straight - everything has to go around corners....

This is composition reacting to a whinging zeitgeist, threatened with the possibility of war. A still-life in time, a means of having hope. The Allam house is in Esfahan was being renovated when we were there. It had been damaged during the Iran-Iraq war.

Part 2 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

There is such a variety of places where you can find water in Berlin: sometimes, you feel like you are in the countryside, other times, it is industrial, or just full. This project has been an excuse to spend time at places where there are bodies of water, whether rivers, canals, fountains or lakes...

Part 3 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.