- Inspired by the myth of Persephone and her abduction and imprisonment in the underworld, Daria Martin's Wintergarden is a spellbinding slowdive into the subterranean shadows of the psyche. The film follows the descent-into-darkness (and subsequent recovery) of a young female protagonist, whose unsteady recuperation at a seaside sanatorium is coloured by Martin's own preoccupation with the past, and her penchant for artistic re-creation and revival.—Ulf Kjell Gür
- Wintergarden was the center of Martin's solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The starting point of Wintergarden, like that of In the Palace, was Martin's fascination with a piece of sculpture - in this case, an unrealised monumental statue of Persephone, Greek goddess of the underworld. This statue was meant to tower over the De La Warr Pavilion, a modernist masterpiece on England's south coast, romantic embodiment of 'socialism by the sea', and the primary location for this film. It was the Pavilion's architect, Eric Mendelsohn, who, in the 1930's, proposed, and then abandoned, plans for Persephone to grace his 20th century 'Wintergarden', although she seemed a peculiar choice to embody the upbeat, health-conscious, quasi-sanitorium character of his building. Perhaps Mendelsohn, a Jew exiled from Weimar Berlin, chose this split, dark goddess because she mirrored his own state of exile. Wintergarden revivifies this lost project, using the structure of the Pavilion as armature, and for flesh: a young woman's climb, downwards, into a strange world of song. Alternating between dark and light, between upward lifting and downward spiralling, Wintergarden awakens a dynamic tension between opposites. The film moves beyond historical reference to the period between the world wars by pointing towards, more generally, captive emotions that shadow heroism.—Daria Martin
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