Heaven aims to provoke. Shot in the style of an amateur vacation movie, this video takes on one of the icons of Australian culture (which, in addition, belongs to a world that is almost exclusively male), the surfer. On a beach and its surroundings, with the rhythm of the soundtrack alternating between crashing waves and singing men, Moffatt hunts down with the lens of her camera various surfers as they get ready to practice their sport.The piece opens on images of surfers changing their clothes, filmed on the sly. Coolly, our unabashed filmmaker examines these bodies of men dressing and undressing. Her cheeky peeping-Tom style takes on a flirtatious appearance. She pesters them, comes on to them. The surfers respond to her with a blend of thoroughly macho rudeness and vexation, both amazed and flattered by her impudence. Meanwhile, Moffatt has a rollicking good time.The unquestionable success of this stylistic exercise springs from the ambivalence of the feelings the film engenders, i.e., a certain pleasure in having a look and a certain discomfort with this voyeuristic process, commonly associated with the behavior of men.While this daring piece stands on its head the traditional representation of the male-female gaze, it certainly does not extol its own pertinence; it is no act of revenge, in other words. Rather, it points up a value system that still obtains, one that can be seen at work daily on television, in advertising, etc., to the most widespread indifference imaginable. These representations have simply passed into custom.

Isabelle Aeby Papaloïzos