Magic Box is part of an on-going series of proposals made by Nathalie Angles for the Luxe Project Space.

Magic Box is a collaborative project by filmmaker Marie Losier and artist Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria. The viewer is invited to look through an aperture and rotate a crank to view a series of moving images of Losier s film Flying Saucey!, frame by frame. Magic Box s singular mechanism refers to precursors of the modern motion picture such as the mutoscope (in which the successive phases of a scene are printed on paper and mounted on a wheel that rotates).

Recently premiered at Anthology Film Archives, Losier reduced the original 9 minutes long film, Flying Saucey!, to 9 seconds, approx. 300 separate still frames. Hence, the succession of these still images once animated by the crank, enfold and create the motion of the characters and its narrative. It thus investigates a entirely different approach to film editing, with the goal of developing a more intimate relationship to film since the option of setting the box into motion or of facing a still image is left to the initiative of an audience reduced to one person at a time.

Losiers open emulation of silent movies and their slapstick style is enhanced by the theatrical nature of the box itself, created by Sanz de Santamaria. As an extravaganza of comical pasta orgy, Flying Saucey! is one of a series of short films where she works within the visual of a silent film, with a penchant for extravagant costume, and camp theatricality that recalls the style of a Jack Smith film. The Magic Box, for the occasion, is the vessel to portray this particular style.