Oh Be a Fine Girl Kiss Me

Storyline

A soul waits to be reincarnated while reflecting back on her past life as a nun, who worked at the Vatican Astronomical Observatory in early-20th century. There, she took part in the “Carte du Ciel” — an ambitious international project to map the night sky, earning the early title of “computer” as a result of processing repetitive calculations. Disillusioned with her previous existence, she considers becoming a coder in her next life, amidst the wave of economic optimism awaiting her reincarnation in 1990s Portugal. Shot on 16mm film and smartphone, "Oh Be a Fine Girl Kiss Me" blends historical fiction and autobiography in a meditation on life’s choices and constraints, as well as on the systems and categories that shaped modernity.

"At the end of the 19th century, the Vatican summoned four nuns to map a portion of the sky for the ambitious Map of the Heavens project: the nuns thus became ‘computers’."

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