The Reason I Collect

Emma Curtis’s short film, which forms an intimate treatise on the importance of hording belongings and possessions, will no doubt draw comparisons with the work of Jan Svankmajer.

As the disembodied narrator extols the virtues and importance of remembering certain things through associations with inanimate objects, we’re treated to a cacophony of animated household items such as buttons and stamps jostling and re-jostling in a drawer. The reasons people place significance on such items - because they are representative of someone else’s life - is the main thrust of the film and a strong sense of nostalgia is effortlessly evoked throughout.

Photographs and letters are personified and, like the drawers in the collector’s cabinet, the film overflows with an abundance of lively and eclectic imagery. It is said that nobody truly dies until they’re forgotten, and Curtis wonderfully displays her fascination with the stories connected with objects before they come into the possession of someone specific.

The history of objects and the significance attached to inanimate things by people gives them true value and meaning, and breathes a life of its own into them.