Readings, Video Essays & Films (week 2)

I. Readings (2)

As we enter Part I of this Media Lab, we want to think about the "figure of the woman director," as Patricia White puts it in her excellent study, Women's Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms (Duke UP, 2015).  White's study is one of several that inspired the organization of this course.  And while my choice of required films that we will experiment with in coming weeks differ from hers for various reasons, her chapters highlight the careers of several directors whose work we will be considering including Lucretia Martel (Argentina), Samir Mukhalsbef (Iran), and Nadine Labaki (Lebanon).  I've thus attached a PDF of White's book to this page, but you are only asked to read the Introduction for Monday's class to orient yourself towards basic questions about the status of women directors in international film cultures of the 21st century.  The PDF of White's study can be accessed here: Women's Cinema World Cinema (P White).pdf Download Women's Cinema World Cinema (P White).pdf

*Optional, but I highly recommend Olivia Khoo's short introduction to a special issue of Studies in World Cinema on "Women's World Cinema" (2021), 115-120, which can be accessed here:  2 Women's World Cinema intro.pdf Download 2 Women's World Cinema intro.pdf

A second required reading will extend our sense of how "performative research" or "material thinking" (to borrow Catherine Grant's terms for videographic criticism) might pertain to media studies written from a phenomenological perspective.  Vivian Sobchack is the hands down best theorist of phenomenology and cinema, and I have an especial fondness for her 2004 collection of essays, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (UC Press).   Thus, your second required reading for Monday's class is her essay from that collection, "What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh" which can be accessed here: What My Fingers Knew (V. Sobchack, 2004).pdf Download What My Fingers Knew (V. Sobchack, 2004).pdf

II. Video Essays (2)

Please keep in mind that your weekly videographic exercise is located on a separate assignment page in each module.  In the future,  I often will include links on the exercise assignment page to video essays that will help you think about the technique you're practicing at that time.   Since our overarching goal in this lab is to become thoughtful editors, and thus to reconfigure existing media texts and "perform" new meanings and perspectives, let's begin with a few video essays "about" editing.  

You might be interested to know that women have long been among the most visionary editors in the history of cinema, although their labor is overshadowed by the prominence granted to directors.  I encourage you to bookmark Su Friedrich's innovative website, "Edited By Links to an external site.," which is a database hosted by Princeton University that surveys the innovative work of 206 women editors in cinema's many genealogies.    

In cinema and media studies, a crucible for thinking about the origins of innovative editing is the Soviet 1920s, a time and place where "montage theories" evolved.  The peer review journal of videographic criticism, {In]Transition, included a short, special issue titled "Montage Reloaded" in 2019.   In preparation for class, watch Karen Pearlman's 5-minute study, "After the Facts, Links to an external site." from that issue.  As always, when watching a video essay published in an academic journal, make certain to also read the creator's statement.  And when the piece is carried in [In]Transition notice that the two, external peer reviews are published alongside the video essay.  This is an important development in academic publishing, so pay attention to these various details and the rhetorical strategies at work as you proceed.  

In contrast to the savvy montage experiments emerging from the Soviet 1920s, the Italian Neo-realist movement that flourished after WWII often is hailed for the absence of editing, and for embracing instead what Andre Bazin once called a "faith in reality."  Ironically, then, one of the video editors whose work inspired the academic formations of this mode of criticism--an editor known as Kogonado--wielded editing techniques to question the very meaning of neorealism in his 2013 video essay for the BFI/ Sight and Sound: "What is Neorealism? Links to an external site."  This is your second required video essay for Monday's session.

When watching Kogonado's oft-cited video essay, you might recall Maria Hoffman's Maria's Maria Links to an external site., which was published in the peer review journal Tecmerin in 2022, and which was included among the video essays we watched last week for day one of class.   And yes, it's true: Hoffman is paying homage to Kogonado by mimicking the timbre and structure of his VoiceOver as well as his split screen approach in her comparison of the two versions of The Sound of Music.  It might be fun to look back at her work this week, now that you've watched "What is Neorealism?”

III. Films (2)

There are two required films for this week, The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma, 2019).  Please make certain to watch both carefully.  You will then choose one of these to edit for your Pechakucha exercise.  Keep the readings listed above in mind as you watch and reflect, then open yourself to learning more through a material, embodied engagement with one of these texts in either DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro software programs.

The two films stream immediately below.  

THE PIANO (1993)

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019)