Sara Oscar’s project From Here to Eternity borrows its title from the 1953 Hollywood film by Fred Zinnerman. The iconic love scene in Zinnerman’s classic film features actors Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in a passionate embrace amongst the lapping waves of Halona Cove, Hawaii. The scene culminates in the camera’s turn from the actors to the crescendo of breaking waves on the beach. The repetitive rolling of the waves implicitly suggest off-screen romantic activity, and this sets the stage for Sara Oscar’s exhibition. Her show, From Here to Eternity is a series of photographic stills taken from the censored love scenes of classic films and projected on an old-fashioned slide projector. The work plays with the relationship between the still photograph and cinema, and the romance of eternal love and separation. In an age of explicit cinematic representation, Oscar’s work plays on the outmoded language of sexual ruination and imagery that taps into the collective imagination to prolong and conceal sexual activity.
