Broken orchids, moving paint: Un-stilling ekphrasis in Helene

According to Murray Krieger, ekphrasis symbolically harnesses objects of art to achieve three-dimensional spatiality, arresting the temporal movement of writing. What then of the ekphrastic impulse in cinema, in a motion picture moving differently than the written word? In the artist biopic Helene (2020), about the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), Schjerfbeck paints a still life of orchids – yet their stillness is an affront and she smashes them to the floor; she paints a self-portrait, freezing herself on the unframed canvas – yet above it is a framed mirror, a reflective portrait in flux. The article explores the ekphrastic dichotomy of movement and stasis as exemplified in the film as well as connections between poetics-based theories of ekphrasis and transmedial expansions of the genre.