Appropriated, The

THE APPROPRIATED was shot in several mega shopping malls with a hidden camera during the annual pre-Christmas crush. An ongoing thread in Dudar’s films is patterned movement, sometimes choreographed, but in this case found and manipulated in post-production. A myriad of editing techniques reveal shamanistic-like rituals in the everyday actions and behaviors of the shoppers. First unnoticed, small gestures are revealed and turned into mystic hand signals. Sometimes the shoppers cross into mysterious dimensions, deftly undermining our comprehension of spacetime. Abetted by the editing, a preponderance of reflective glass throughout challenges our perception of what is real, and what is a picture of a picture. Every once in a while, people’s public masks are whisked away, revealing an inner, sometimes dark complexity of emotions. A Tesla logo, a cross-like capital “T”, hovers over a scene. This, and other corporate logos (icons?) are ubiquitous, unshakable—inviting the question: just who or what is being appropriated in THE APPROPRIATED?