Hamed Karami
“TI.CO.TA” is an exploration of the dynamic between the reflective, self-conscious control of the body and the uncontrollable dimension of body-memory, seen through the daily life of a flamenco dancer. The project was born from a conversation with Lucie Méline, a French dancer, about “compás”—the rhythmic flow at the heart of flamenco. The process of integrating this flow into the body became the central focus of the work.
The film investigates the duality between the common perception of the body as an object, separate from the mind, and the “body-mind” as an inseparable unity that simultaneously receives and interprets experience. Without a fixed scenario, I began filming Lucie and her dance group in Toulouse, France, as they were preparing a choreography, documenting their daily efforts to tame their bodies and movements through various methods. As the efforts intensified, embodying the flow seemed increasingly unreachable. This led us to experiment with physical exhaustion through repeated movements and filmed takes, aiming to disrupt reflective control and self-observation. Through this process, an emotional state gradually emerged, leading to a moment of inversion—from reflective awareness to the realm of pre-reflective perception—and to a brief alignment between the two. A fleeting moment of resignation and openness, in which the flow could finally propagate naturally through the body.
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Hamed Karami is an Iranian filmmaker and screenwriter based in Paris. His main focus is to explore the architecture of human experience across diverse subjects. Inspired by phenomenology, his cinematic language and collaborative work with actors focus on the corporeal and sensorial dimensions of experience. His work spans multiple forms, from experimental pieces to documentary and fiction, reflecting a continual search for embodied expression in cinema.
