This is the second “videographic” edition of Film Matters (the first can be accessed at https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2017/03/17/introduction-videographic-essays-issue-1-2017-by-allison-de-fren-adam-charles-hart/). It features four undergraduate audiovisual essays that are each global in scope and varied in their interests. As in the previous edition, we attempted to choose videos that not only demonstrated critical rigor and insight, but also took full advantage of the form. These videos all engage strikingly with the visual: they are stylish and compelling, but they are also all concerned with teaching their viewers how to watch movies. They use video to explore images for meaning, and they show us how to do so as well
In “Framing Time: Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There?,” Catrina Sun-Tan (Wellesley College) shows how the Taiwanese master’s transcendental conception of time is expressed not only through long-durational sequence shots, but also within the mise-en-scène. In “Gendered Resistance and Composition in the Film Timbuktu,” Alyne Figueiredo Gonçalves (Middlebury College) examines in impressive detail the positioning of female characters in moments of resistance, as well as how director Abderrahmane Sissako inscribes notions of polital resistance into his filmic compositions. Both scholars not only show us how space and time are used within the films they examine, but they also draw out the subtle meanings within larger stylistic choices.
Spencer Slovic (Stanford University) is also concerned with “slow cinema,” arguing that auteurs like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Jia Zhang-ke are the creative heirs of the Italian neorealists, and that they offer a resistant alternative to the maximalist style of mainstream film. Slovic moreover focuses on the ethics of slow cinema, presenting events without imposing judgment or interpretation.
Finally, “Perpetuating the Witch-Hunt: Animals and Female Power in Film,” by Hillia Aho (Occidental College), examines representations of female power through a history of witches in the movies. Aho focuses on employment of animal imagery to dissect a variety of films’ sexist assumptions about their powerful female characters, before analyzing in greater detail the box office hit Maleficent (2014) and the critically respected art house horror film The Witch (2015).
The call for submissions for future issues of Film Matters’ videographic edition will be posted to the website soon!
Contents
Framing Time: Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There? (Catrina Sun-Tan, Wellesley College)
Gendered Resistance and Composition in the Film Timbuktu (Alyne Figueiredo Gonçalves, Middlebury College)
Slowness and Slow Cinema (Spencer Slovic, Stanford University)
Perpetuating the Witch-Hunt: Animals and Female Power in Film (Hillia Aho, Occidental College)
