Summary Of The Short Film 'ASMAT-Nomi'

In the 2014 short film ASMAT- Nomi per tutte le vittime in mare (names in memory of all victims of the sea.), director Dagmawi Yimer illuminates the tragedy of the migrant lives lost to the Mediterranean in experimental form. For the majority of the film, a narrator lists the names of the migrants who died in a shipwreck on October 3, 2013, after opening the film with a partially-sung monologue from a migrant's perspective. Yimer depicts the names that are read aloud as shrouded forms bobbing up and down in clear ocean water and as watercolor portraits of their living faces and bodies. Towards the middle of the film, the camera views the huddled mass from above, turning blindly under thick white sheets, then dives underwater after swaying on the surface for a moment, weaving through the actors' arms and legs as the names of the lost are repeated and translated. For about 2 minutes …show more content…
Towards the end of this period, the shot becomes inverted, with the characters' feet and the sea floor at the top of the frame, then shifting so that the camera is staring down at the sea floor, before the film cuts back to the earlier aerial shot for about a minute to end the scene. In this scene, Yimer uses camera angles, editing, and camera movement to amplify the effects of the names by immersing the viewer into the experience of drowning.
The camera angles that Yimer uses in this scene, including high angle, neutral angle, and low angle, allow him to place the viewer underneath the waves with the lost souls. When the scene opens with a high angle establishing shot of the characters amassed underneath their sheets, or shrouds, Yimer establishes their distress as well as their size, without removing the viewer too far from the action. Through