Kismet

We watch yet another dream – at first sight more appealing but underneath no less essential and bloody – in the short film Kismet (2003) by a young artist Shelbatra Jashari. Kismet captivates and lulls into pleasure with its dreamy visual image (expressive black and white images, filmed on a 8mm reel, running and overlaying; in the rustle of often indefinite forms, there are distinctive motifs of female body and face) that reads like a successful compliment to the legendary Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren (1943). But there, in the world of intoxicating and irrational sequence of beautiful images where Maya Deren sixty years ago paranoically searched for (only) her own identity, Shelbatra Jashari today looks for the identity of an entire generation. The generation of young girls from the East who dream of revolution.