From the film-maker:

My interpretation of the painting was based around the idea of two worlds – a real one and an imaginary one. The girl sitting on the window ledge seemed to be a symbolic figure, a bridge between the inside and the outside. So I came up with the story of the man with the telescope, the lonely composer of the music of the planets, and a fish in a fish tank, living in both of these worlds – basically, a metaphor of the modern human being. I found it related to Pythagoras’ theory on music of the spheres (that every planet has its own sound). The ancient Greeks also believed that people can hear the music of the spheres just before they die. I wanted to create a film which would be not that much about life and death, but more about the coexistence of fantasy and reality, as well as about loneliness, measured by the size of the universe.

Olga Makarchuk

A piece inspired by Louis-Léopold Boilly: A Girl at a Window, after 1799