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« Memoirs of a nurse », is the third part of a trilogy of video works featuring marionnettes in a hybrid of theater and film. The action takes place after death, in a « beyond » where psychoanalysis turns out to be obligatory and also an infinite process. Through the eyes of the protagonist : E, the film portrays how she and the different characters from her past life relate to psychoanalysis. She tries to figure out the meaning of love via transference towards the therapist, whom she perceives as a rescuing, reparative object. In order to pay for their daily post mortem sessions, through endless nights the characters have to work in a factory, which « produces » words on a circular conveyor belt. On the blurred line between dream and nightmare, utopia and dystopia, the film is a fond, but critical take on analysis. In the film, the psychoanalyst is portrayed by a marionette that looks like David Lynch, and a marionette resembling Larry David plays the receptionist at the post-mortem hall and the occasional analyst. Their dialog is an extract from the « Clinical diary « of Sándor Ferenczi.

Esther Toth was born in Budapest. She studied in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the studio of Christian Boltanski. She received the Erasmus grant for the San Francisco Art Institute for the cinema section. She has spent several years studying the Stanislavski method in New York and Paris. But it was mainly her analytical work that motivated her, and upon which she directly drew her trilogy of films featuring marionettes. Did I dream you or did you dream me? (2010) was produced with the help of the Fonds de dotation d’Agnès b. The second part of the trilogy Sisters, a classic case (2012), was completed with the help of the Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée and Tomorrowland. These two films were projected at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2013, followed by a debate with art critic Catherine Francblin. The third part of the trilogy Memoirs of a nurse (2015), was granted the help of the Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques and the Centre national des arts plastiques and will be projected in the Centre Pompidou in 2017.