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.

Long ago in ancient Persia, Esther saved the Jews there from a massacre: Beauty and Justice prevail. 2 floating worlds - blue and red, and earth tones. We celebrate PURIM in remembrance. (DSP)

Red light. Two cars. So I hit the brakes- PFFFHP TT! And can’t get up, can’t move… Acoustic collage: Ruth Wiesenfeld. (DSP)

Completed in 2024. 40 sec, Super 8

The reflections in this complex, where I was treated by an osteopath, as well as how people moved therein, fascinated me… (DSP)

Although this part of Neukölln (a district in Berlin) has a reputation as a dangerous place, I see it, through golden late summer light, as an inviting place. I have lived, for 10 years, on a side street of the Hermannstraße, first on the one side, then on the other. Gentrification has already commenced a few blocks north of where I live: there's a gradual progression heading south on Hermannstraße; closer to Hermannplatz, things get busier. North of the famous square is as trendy as in many other parts of town now. This multimedia project (16mm film, installation and hand-made book) is an attempt to make the different segments of this street palatable to viewers: it's not a matter of relaying a message, but more a feeling of the place... (DSP)

Long ago in ancient Persia, Esther saved the Jews there from a massacre: Beauty and Justice prevail. 2 floating worlds - blue and red, and earth tones. We celebrate PURIM in remembrance. (DSP)

Red light. Two cars. So I hit the brakes- PFFFHP TT! And can’t get up, can’t move… Acoustic collage: Ruth Wiesenfeld. (DSP)

Completed in 2024. 40 sec, Super 8

The reflections in this complex, where I was treated by an osteopath, as well as how people moved therein, fascinated me… (DSP)

Although this part of Neukölln (a district in Berlin) has a reputation as a dangerous place, I see it, through golden late summer light, as an inviting place. I have lived, for 10 years, on a side street of the Hermannstraße, first on the one side, then on the other. Gentrification has already commenced a few blocks north of where I live: there's a gradual progression heading south on Hermannstraße; closer to Hermannplatz, things get busier. North of the famous square is as trendy as in many other parts of town now. This multimedia project (16mm film, installation and hand-made book) is an attempt to make the different segments of this street palatable to viewers: it's not a matter of relaying a message, but more a feeling of the place... (DSP)

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...

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...

Loosely based on Lewis Caroll's Through the looking glass, BREAD is a series of metamorphoses. We pass through a table into a world of strange mutations: bread crumbs bounce and dance. At the end gravity wins.

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

During the pandemic, I shot single frame 16mm material dealing with the dialectic between wanted to be left alone and spending time with people. The result, shot over a bit less than a year, is a film called ZERRISSEN (Torn) which expresses my thoughts during this unusual time. The film was shot in its final order and not edited; when it was finished, I recorded and added sound.

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)

The Hertabrücke (Herta bridge) is around the corner from me & a neighbourhood place to meet... (DSP)

Part 2 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

A short film by Deborah S. Phillips.

Part 3 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

Ruminations about the color red.

A film-portrait, made by the window, of the eponymous street in Berlin. Complemented with a live sound performance by the author.

Green turns red, so my colours come full circle.

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.

It's too complicated to answer, when people ask where I'm from. Blotches of colour on film are my continents, my home. (DSP)

A tribute to a special place – Kunstquartier Bethanien

A 35 mm. experimental film.

Fragments and impressions of urban debris come alive through playful stop-motion and superimpositions. Scraps, ribbons, caps, paper, plastic, cans and objects beyond identification lie scattered beneath the bridges and along the streets. A multi-lingual meditation on the poetry of waste.

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...

This film explores the handing over of objects from one hand to another. Each version of the film was developed differently. This one is the number 4. (Deborah S. Phillips)

As a printmaker, the effect of sequences of prints & details thereof always seem to want to be filmed…

The idea: swapped rolls of 16mm film with an artist colleague & shot multiple exposures of other colleagues clinking glasses against a black background. &, no matter where you go, there are people who want to clink glasses & say – CHIN-CHIN! Reflections are thin lines against black. it can’t be digitised… (DSP)

Part 4 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

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

For decades, I've been walking up & down this road, usually starting at the centre of the universe, Hermannplatz, heading north to Bethanien or the market. At some point in time, it seemed that some of the plants, especially one, was telling me to make a film about them; a busy road with lots of cars and, if you look carefully, some plants.

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.

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.

«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 short film by Deborah S. Phillips.

when an artist has to improvise... she finds something green in it

Part 1 of the Bethanien Tetralogy.

Reflections on the joy of being able to use a large studio to paint & to be able to film as well for a short time. Filmed in Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Deborah S. Phillips Super 8, stumm, 2005 2:30 min.

After 13 years of artistic research into the 3 colours of light (which started with CAPSICUM), this film (also made a handmade book) looks into the colour that is, bascially, life - green.

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.