Pulling focus away from the traditional grammar of western cinema, we (students of Contemporary Moving Image Practices with Aily Tanaka Nash) bear in mind a selection of contemporary filmmakers and video artists who offer glimpses and durations which traverse an array of vivid cultural landscapes.

 

Straying from the camera tricks, gimmicks and styles of standard narratives, which compose much of western mainstream cinema, the selected films and videos offer fluidity in place of rigidity. They form constellations of cultural memories written in light and sound. Instead of directing our attention to the immediate and evident, these works expand our peripheral vision of our surrounding world. In her film Mambar Pierrette (2023) [1], Rosine Mbakam offers visibility to the work and daily routine of a seamstress in Cameroon. This visibility not only depicts the precarity of one woman’s livelihood, but shows the relentless attention and work required just to maintain daily life. Mbakam’s own relentless attention to her subject brings forth these perspectives and observations which might otherwise be neglected. 

 

In the periphery, where they lay their scenes, the filmmakers embrace softness not only through motion and depth of focus, but also as an alternative to rigid forms of storytelling. There is fluidity in the methods of filmmaking which are necessary to depict ideas and stories which are unfixed and flexible themselves. Softness or blurriness in this regard, makes space for nuance and interpretation where the specificity of language is too imposing or direct to relay a feeling. In Sky Hopinka’s video titled wawa , (2014)[2] the words of the Chinuk Wawa language are translated into multiple possible equivalents in English. The video, which shows a language class in New York, has subtitles which offer two or three word possibilities to circumlocute around the original meaning. This multiplicity of layered meanings serves to counter static signification. It also shows how much can be lost in the translation from one language to another.

 

The camera, as an apparatus, is inherently entangled with loss and exploitation. It “takes” glimpses from respective contexts and often emits them with an illusion of objective truth. The disparity between what is emitted and what occurs behind the lens or behind the scenes has the potential to elicit violence or detriment, either knowingly or unknowingly by the filmmaker. Within the selected films and through speaking with the filmmakers directly, a mutual understanding became apparent, that an objective truth is neither possible nor aspired for. The camera as an object which instigates, can also disrupt the environments it enters simply through this re-projection of images into new contexts. In her documentary Wildness (2012)[3], Wu Tsang documents a recurring party and the nightly operations of a trans bar and nightclub in LA over the span of a few years. In the film, the detrimental effects of renewed visibility become explicit when the club is subjected to hateful publicity and negative attention. Tsang recognizes this dynamic and struggles to overcome this dilemma between making visible and making vulnerable. The audience, as well as the camera, we learn, is a significant factor, not a passive observing entity, and it is carefully considered in different ways by the filmmakers. 

 

As a group of students coming from various backgrounds and disciplines, we have gathered weekly to watch a selection of works from each of our selected filmmakers. Our repertoire of moving images includes works from Wu Tsang, Rosine Mbakam, Sky Hopinka, Alice Diop, Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys, Helena Wittmann and Maryam Tafakory. Besides immersing ourselves in their works, we have had the enjoyment and privilege of speaking in depth to each of the filmmakers independently about their practice. Through this collection of interviews, critical essays and creative pieces, we intend to convey the intricacies of our selected films by bringing into the light what occurs behind the scenes and between takes. Wandering further into the periphery, softness works to oppose stiff conventions of storytelling. We contemplate and discuss the perspectives and techniques of filmmakers who offer new ways of seeing the world around us.

 

 

REFERENCES

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[1] Mbakam, Rosine, dir. Mambar Pierrette (2023)

[2] Hopinka, Sky, dir. Wawa (2014)

[3] Tsang, Wu, dir. Wildness (2012)