MING OF HARLEM: TWENTY ONE STOREYS IN THE AIR

Ming is a tiger, Al is an alligator. What they have in common is that they have coexisted for years with Antoine Yates in his Harlem high-rise apartment. Phillip Warnell picked up this true if unlikely story as the subject of his new film, using Yates’ own recollection and police footage of the discovery to relate it. Thus the director continues the cinematographic enquiry about the body he started with The Girl with the X-ray Eyes (FID 2008), which explored the implications of the body’s inner visibility, followed by Outlandish (FID 2009), which addressed animality.
Looking deeper into this singular experience, Warnell adds his own ingredients. He sets this story side by side with a new meditation from philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who was already involved in Outlandish, just as we are being shown this unusual cohabitation at length in a meticulous reconstruction of Yates’ apartment. Doubles of the big cat and the reptile, just like fabulous heroes, move about before our eyes, from the kitchen to the bed, from the bathroom to the terrace. Their pacing up and down in a somewhat mesmerized state and in slow moves, only interrupted by some growling, slowly builds a strangely different space. And the coming-andgoing between the materials connected in such a way finally livens up, feeds and enlightens our relationship to ourselves as regards animality, without ever exhausting it, like a poetics in progress. (NF)