Three Farewells

This trilogy is about three ways of saying goodbye. Janis Rafa looks at the ritual of burial in several different ways. Three Farewells is a mix of fiction, where everything is staged, and reality. The visual stories are based on her memories: the man in the film is her real father and she filmed in the landscape of her youth.

Rafa grew up close to Athens, in a down-at-heel, partially neglected area between the big city and the countryside. This undefined, shadowy zone between culture and nature is the backdrop to many of her films, and also in this trilogy. Rafa sets up a post-apocalyptic sense of mourning against a majestic landscape in which isolated figures become negligible beings, part of a greater whole.

Roles reversed

In this largely desolate, vast landscape, she reverses the usual roles between humans and non-humans. The dog, for example, tends to a recently deceased body. Our projection of humane intent onto the dog’s actions makes the animal extremely human, Het Centraal Museum wrote about the film Our Dead Dogs. Digging a grave, covering the body with earth, the whole funerary ritual no longer seems the exclusive preserve of mankind.

Rafa created this work at the Rijksakademie – the first time she worked in such a cinematic way, with a larger crew.