Floating House
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Floating House.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A furnished room hangs above a sea of cloud. A tea set sits on the table, pot, cups, a spoon aligned. A figure stands at the window. Mountains are far below, small as a drawing, their snow a few pale marks. A desk nearby holds papers and a radio that gives only a soft hiss. The hiss does not become a voice. Curtains at the broken side of the room hang straight, though the room is open to the air.
A hand releases a porcelain cup. The saucer stays under it. Neither falls. The cup hangs at the height of the fingers that have already left it, a small gap of air, the handle turned just so. No drop leaves the rim. The figure's hand lowers and does not reach back up to correct the hanging.
The far half of the floor is gone. Cloud occupies the place where the boards used to continue. The rug ends in a clean line over nothing. Threads at the line do not fray further while the figure watches. Beyond the window, a modern building drifts, level with the room, its own windows dark, no ground under it either. It moves the way a slow ship moves, without a wake in the cloud.
The spoon on the tray does not slide toward the missing floor. The pot's lid stays seated. Cloud below the broken boards moves faster than the cloud past the window, two speeds that do not agree, and the room does not choose between them. The figure's reflection in the window is faint and does not include the hanging cup, as if the glass had kept the person and declined the porcelain. Papers on the desk remain in their stack. The radio hiss dips when the dark building draws level and returns when the building's shadow leaves the pane. Nothing in the room is asked to explain the dip or to close the gap under the cup.
The figure watches that building and not the hanging cup. The radio hisses. Papers do not blow, though the room is open to the cloud. One corner of a paper lifts and lies flat again, a courtesy the wind does not insist on. The cup and the saucer keep their small distance. Time passes as the modern building slides, window by dark window, and does not brush the house.
The saucer rises a finger toward the hanging cup and stops, the gap narrower, still a gap, neither of them coming down to the table. The figure does not turn to see it. The modern building clears the window and is gone into cloud. The cup remains in the air above the saucer. Mountains stay far below the broken floor, and the tea set does not come down.
The cup and the saucer keep the narrowed gap and do not close it.