A Neo-Formalist Approach to Imperfect Praxis

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a script for a video essay written in the winter of 2025 for my Screen Studies class at AFTRS, in which I explore a potential response to the AI-fication and sanitisation of mainstream cinema through Dr. Alistair Gall’s framework of ‘imperfect praxis’. The video is embedded below but I’ve (very quickly) added citations to the script where I saw fit. It was written and edited under a bit of tight crunch—i.e. the usual post-procrastination caffeine binge and sleep deprivation—and the V/O was all done in a single take on a very shitty mic. Despite all this, this assignment—and corresponding class—were the one thing I absolutely had the most fun in all the three years I spent at AFTRS and I hope you enjoy watching/reading this as much as I enjoyed making it.

Over the past three years, we’ve seen near-exponential progress¹ in the capabilities of AI, with little to no signs that this progress is slowing. In fact, a recent paper² led by ex-OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo forecasts that, by ~September 2026, AI agents will match a professional programmer’s coding abilities while simultaneously being able to “think” at 15x the speed of the average human brain. This has—and should continue to—force a critical re-evaluation of our approach to almost every field of study from the scientific to the artistic—film included.

Every single major film studio has already integrated AI tools into every step of the production pipeline. Disney’s Zurich-based research team has even created FaceDirector—a tool that utilises AI to composite an actor’s facial expressions from across multiple different takes into a single unbroken shot, allowing them to manipulate performances in post-production ³. As scary as that sounds, it’s important to note that these are assistive tools and that in the right hands, with the right goals, these tools can be incredibly useful. However, in the hands of these major corporations—who already sell us soulless, repackaged nostalgia in an attempt to sate the insatiable appetites of their shareholders—achieving their goal of maximal profit means universal appeal, which in turn means sanitisation and dilution of themes, messaging and stories to ensure broad marketability across cultures. Given AI’s inability to capture cultural subtleties due to the vast amounts of data it’s trained on ⁴, the integration of it into this hyper-commercialised, homogenised approach to the creation of art is bound to only accelerate the sanitisation we’re seeing all across the cinematic mainstream.

So how do we respond to this?

We look to the past.

In 1979, a Cuban filmmaker named Julio Garcia Espinosa published an essay titled “For an Imperfect Cinema” ⁵. Motivated by what he saw as the culturally imperialist tendencies of the cinematic exports of the first world—which placed much emphasis on bourgeois notions of technical quality—he argued for the establishment of a Third Cinema in direct opposition to the capitalist sensibilities of Hollywood as well as the arthouse lean of European films. Espinosa spends much of the essay laying out the foundational context of this so-called Imperfect Cinema, before finally defining it, stating—

Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a [35mm camera] or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle. Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in ‘good taste.’…The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the “cultured” elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?

Far from being dated, Espinosa’s fight against cultural imperialism directly parallels the challenge of cultural homogenisation that we face in this era of cinema. Interestingly, the ideas put forth in his essay are far ahead of his time—he predicts the “universalisation of college-level instruction” as well as the democratisation of film technology and even the impact that the invention of the television would have on cinemas worldwide.

The ideas at the heart of Espinosa’s Third Cinema would later be expanded upon by Dr. Allister Gall in his 2016 thesis titled “Towards a Cinema of Imperfection: Participatory Film as Research”. In it, he defines his central idea of ‘imperfect praxis’—a film-specific participatory research method that resists the often-rigid nature of theoretical academic work by embracing a DIY, disruptive approach towards what is a typically procedural methodology ⁶. He then goes on to outline the driving question of the thesis—can this framework of imperfect praxis create emancipatory value by making filmmaking accessible to all through the emerging social space of the internet?

Gall’s work leans very heavily towards exploring the participatory and theoretical dimensions of imperfect praxis. The idea at its core, however, is to deliberately disrupt these default, widely accepted methods of practice or creation in order to free the creator of this burden of technical quality and aesthetic polish that has increasingly become the focal point of the cinematic artform, superseding meaning-making and storytelling as the primary driver of the creative act. As more and more studios begin to replace redundant roles throughout the production pipeline with AI tools, it stands to reason that, when faced with creative decisions, these tools will have in mind the same goal of achieving broad universal appeal that studio executives have, leading to an acceleration of the ongoing sanitisation of screen content.

This idea of deliberate methodological disruption at the center of Gall’s imperfect praxis meshes well with the methodological approach of neo-formalism. While imperfect praxis concerns itself with the methods of creating, neo-formalist film theory deals with the consumption of said creation, exploring the relationship between a spectator and a piece of art through a parametric framework, forcing a viewer to critique each film on the strength of the unique formal elements utilised within the film, rather than through the rote, often-formulaic approach typical of other avenues of criticism.

A key principle of neo-formalism is defamiliarisation—the act of presenting familiar things in an unfamiliar way so as to disrupt the viewer’s habitualised perception of reality. As noted by prominent neo-formalist scholar Kristin Thomson however, the effectiveness of this defamiliarisation is tied directly to the historical context in which a piece is produced—devices that may be new and defamiliarising at the time of creation will slowly decline in effectiveness as their use becomes more and more commonplace ⁷. This synergises perfectly with Gall’s definition of imperfection as “methods against methods” and by synthesising the principles at the heart of these two parallel approaches to film, we arrive at a framework that—unlike frameworks created by past movements such as Dogme 95, Nick Zedd’s Cinema of Transgression or even Third Cinema—does not center itself around ideology or specific techniques, but rather the principal philosophy driving the creative act itself.

Nick Murcott’s 2023 short, Gooners⁸ is an excellent film to explore this proposed framework with, especially given Murcott’s use of AI-generated elements through the film. Created as part of a university assignment, Murcott originally intended to shoot the entire film on the Mini DV format, was unable to do so due to a requirement that a set amount of the film be shot utilising hi-res cinema cameras. In the edit, however, Murcott settled on using this limitation to create an aesthetic juxtaposition between the “jarringly high-definition…moments of clarity for the main character [and] scrunched-up images of his disintegrating mind”⁹, going on to state that the edit pace of the film attempts evoke the information overload that comes with the over-consumption of the internet. Interestingly, this has similarities to a Brechtian technique known as verfremdungseffekt, a German term roughly translating to “estrangement effect”, a technique where stylistic devices are used to distance the viewers from the characters so as to critically engage the viewer, drawing their attention instead to the formal construction of the piece. Gooners inverts this technique—utilising its frenetic pace to instead situate the viewer deeper into the main character’s perspective—with the achieved effect being the same, drawing the viewer’s attention to the construction of the film. This is a clear example of both defamiliarisation and the deliberate disruption of a method used since early in the 20th century, clearly demonstrating the driving philosophy of my proposed framework in practice.

This philosophy is something that AI will never be able to reproduce by itself. AI thrives on mimesis—if we choose to respond to the AI-driven sanitisation of art by simply chasing aesthetic imperfection, we fall into the same trap we face now—the unfamiliar we create will be rendered familiar in the mere blink of an eye. Instead, if we apply this guiding philosophy of utilising deliberately disruptive, defamiliarising methods of creation to our pursuit of artistic expression and analysis, we will find ourselves fighting this capitalistic, tech-bro driven homogenisation of art on terms dictated by us, the creatives, and us, the consumers. If we do not shift the goalposts set by these mega-corporations—grooming us to endlessly chase the high of systematic optimisation and perfection—we will lose this fight and we will lose it decisively. The only way forward, is for us to bring those goalposts back under our control by embracing our human imperfection with open arms and returning our focus—both as creators and consumers—to the human expression of meaning and emotion that is the core of all art.

Bibliography

AI Timeline Key Events in Artificial Intelligence from 1950-2025. (n.d.). The AI Navigator Your Guide Through the World of AI. Retrieved August 18, 2025, from https://www.theainavigator.com/ai-timeline ↩
Kokotajlo, D., Alexander, S., Larsen, T., Lifland, E., & Dean, R. (2025, April 3). AI 2027. AI 2027. https://ai-2027.com/ ↩
Malleson, C., Bazin, J.-C., Wang, O., Bradley, D., Beeler, T., Hilton, A., & Sorkine-Hornung, A. (2015). FaceDirector: Continuous Control of Facial Performance in Video. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 3979–3987. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCV.2015.453 ↩
Uddin, S. M. I., Sumon, R. I., Islam Mozumder, M. A., Hussin Chowdhury, M. K., Theodore Armand, T. P., & Kim, H. C. (2025). Innovations and Challenges of AI in Film: A Methodological Framework for Future Exploration. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl., 21(7), 199:1-199:55. https://doi.org/10.1145/3736724 ↩
Espinosa, J. G. (1979). For an imperfect cinema. Jump Cut, 20, 24–26. https://archive.org/details/sim_jump-cut_1979-05_20/page/24/mode/1up. ↩
Gall, A. (2016). Towards a Cinema of Imperfection: Participatory Film as Research. Thesis. University of Plymouth. https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/foahb-theses-other/287 ↩
Thompson, K. (1988). Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis. Princeton University Press. ↩
Murcott, N. (Director). (2023, October 13). Gooners [Video recording]. Dreamboy Videos. https://vimeo.com/1009051367 ↩
Murcott, N. (2024, October 31). When the Pixels Meet the Flesh: An Interview with ‘Gooners’ Director Nick Murcott and Actor Kai Perrignon [Interview]. https://roughcutfilm.com/2024/10/31/when-the-pixels-meet-the-flesh-an-interview-with-gooners-director-nick-murcott-and-actor-kai-perrignon/ ↩

Guan Wei's Two-finger exercise no.4

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Two-finger exercise no. 4 (1989) — Guan Wei

Guan Wei // China, 1989

Guan Wei was born in Beijing in 1957, a descendant of the Manchu—rulers of China during the Qing Dynasty, the last Chinese imperial dynasty—who, in their 276 years of rule, ushered in an era of rich artistic culture. One specific group of Qing artists—loyalists of the previous Ming dynasty, known as individualists, who often made eccentric, abstract political pieces protesting against the Qing Dynasty¹—seems to have influenced Wei’s work, both in content and style, especially much of his early work, which consists of blunt depictions of the horrors taking place in 1989 China—during the Tiananmen Square protests—in an expressionist, surreal style.

Wei cites the support and encouragement of his father—who was an actor in the Beijing opera—as one of his primary inspirations for pursuing his passion for art. As a child, Wei often went to the opera to watch his father perform, where he recalls being astounded by the emotional depth and realism of the performances, as well as the colours pervading the entire space, saying “the Beijing Opera, the colour and gesture, is there in the surface of my pictures, but the deeper human aspects of personality are behind my pictures”².

After leaving Beijing for an artist residency at the Tasmanian School of Art in January 1989, Wei returned to China in early April, just as student protests began over the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Hu Yaobang³—a high-ranking CCP party member who often advocated for more stringent legal limits to the CCP’s dictatorial sphere of influence. Over the coming months, events would slowly escalate, as the movement gained public support and broadened in scope, targeting corruption as well as advocating for freedom and democracy. Eventually, on the 3rd of June in 1989, martial law was declared in Beijing, and the CCP sent in the military. By the 5th, the military had reached and cleared Tiananmen Square of any remaining protestors, taking the lives of thousands—estimates vary due to the CCP’s retroactive obfuscation of the events that took place⁴—and wounding countless others as they marched towards their goal.

Two-finger exercise no. 4 was painted on the 15th of June 1989, approximately two weeks after the military had taken the square. Wei painted on letter-sized cards with gouache—a painting technique dating back to 4th century Egypt⁵ that essentially combines watercolours with an additional binding agent, resulting in an opaque watercolour when dry. Everything about the image communicates the chaos and indiscriminate violence imposed upon the Chinese people during this time—particularly the burning building taking up much of the background—with the half-faced individual depicted in the picture, contorting their left hand into the two-fingered “V” known as the “Victory Salute”, even as their right hand contorts into a finger-gun pointed directly at their own head.

Elements of Composition

colour

The background of this piece is dominated by analogous muddy pigments of orange—the colour of fire—including an orange-yellow and an orange-red, colours contrasted only by the muted greyish-white of the person in the centre, as well as the thick black frame that they are forced to exist within, emphasising this feeling of claustrophobia in an unfamiliar, chaotic environment. Every colour in this piece is dull except for one splash of saturated colour across the very bottom of the piece—the blood patched across the person’s torso remains a bright red, drawing the viewer’s eye. This is aided by the slight, gradual saturation in the colours of the dancing flames, which seem to surround and envelop the person—a saturation seen especially in the brightness of the orange-yellow crowning the person’s head. Every use of colour in this piece is intentionally designed to emphasise the innate chaos of the authoritarian violence and destruction depicted in the background of this piece, which, in turn, contrasts the emphasised tranquillity of the person ending their own life, in pursuit of the hope of freedom from the effects of the iron grip of an unseen, totalitarian ruling class.

texture

The element of texture is integral to the aforementioned chaotic feel of this piece. The uneven thickness of the downward brushwork of the black frame assists in drawing the eye down to the main point of interest of the piece—the person, who is themselves textured smoothly with no visible brushstrokes, communicating a sense of peace and calm. This, in turn, contrasts with the bootprint-like texture of the blood and grime—subtly overlaid on the person’s body, getting far more opaque as it reaches the bottom of the frame—as well as the crude grey lines forming a building, which has been etched over the smoking, raging flames surrounding the person. Amongst all this chaos, the eye is repeatedly drawn back to the smooth, centred individual taking their own life—perhaps in protest at the state of the world surrounding them—forcing the viewer to contemplate the clear juxtaposition between serenity and anarchy, daring them to rationalise the contradictory yet seemingly harmonious existence of the two.

shape & form

Interestingly, Wei utilises both shape and form in this piece as complementary elements to further drive home the contrast between the person and their environment. While the piece itself is mostly two-dimensional—the doorway, building, and flames are all presented as flat objects without any depth—Wei adds a subtle shadow surrounding the inside of the individual’s outline, particularly on the left side of the subject’s face, endowing them with form by way of Wei’s suggestion of both depth—in the subject’s separation (and potential alienation) from their environment—as well as a sense of rational coherence amongst seemingly irrational expressionist scrawlings.

Principles of Composition

balance & symmetry

One of the compositional principles subverted and experimented with in this piece is the principle of balance and symmetry. Looking at the image above, it becomes clear that this piece is neither vertically nor horizontally symmetrical, with additional visual elements—the subject’s singular eye and lipstick-adorned lips, as well as the bullet and its trail—present on the bottom right quadrant of the image, elements which are not found on the bottom left quadrant. The hands of the subject have also been contorted in a very unnatural, odd way on both sides of the image. This slight breaking of otherwise perfect vertical symmetry places further emphasis on these elements, drawing the viewer’s attention further into the piece. Furthermore, these elements help balance the piece against the plumes of black smoke in the top-left quadrant of the flame, while the individual in the bottom quadrant of the piece balances against the scaffolded building in the top quadrant. By making the image balanced while subtly breaking the vertical symmetry of the artwork, Wei draws attention to the specific parts of the image that he wants to highlight.

unity & harmony

The individual presented in Two-Finger Exercise No. 4 exists in direct contrast with everything else in the piece, residing only within the bottom half of the image, dwarfed in scale by both frame and flame, compounding upon the sense of overwhelming, all-encompassing anarchy presented in the subject’s surroundings. Here we see Wei’s subversion of the compositional principles of unity and harmony in favour of a sort of harmonious discord, wherein harmony is found in the analogous colour scheme of the flame, painted almost randomly with the brushstrokes of the flame seeming to vary wildly in size, shape, and direction. This itself exists in direct opposition to both the strictly directional brushstrokes used for the black frame, as well as the smooth, dull white exterior of the individual, emphasised by the thin contour of the outline and shadow surrounding them.

Bibliography

Maxwell K. Hearn, “The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): Painting,” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, accessed April 15, 2023, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/qing_1/hd_qing_1.htm ↩
Ma Jingjing, “Guan Wei: The Journey to Australia,” MegaphoneOz, July 17, 2013, https://megaphoneoz.com/guan-wei-the-journey-to-australia/ ↩
Corinna-Barbara Francis, “The Progress of Protest in China: The Spring of 1989,” Asian Survey 29, no. 9 (1989): 898–915, https://doi.org/10.2307/2644834 ↩
Andrew J. Nathan, “The New Tiananmen Papers: Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 4 (2019): 80–91. ↩
Andrew J. Nathan, “The New Tiananmen Papers: Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 4 (2019): 80–91. ↩

Mao’s Marx and the Chinese Civil War

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The modern-day ideology that governs the political organisation of the People’s Republic of China bears little resemblance to the philosophy first posited by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1800s and why should it? Even China’s first introduction to Marxism, which came in the form of what is now known as Maoism, was specifically catered to work amid the Chinese Civil War took more from Leninism (itself a localised version of Marxism) than it did from Marxist ideology. It is important to note that there have been “seismic changes in policy, legislative enactments, and application”¹ since Mao Zedong’s rule came to an end at the time of his passing in 1976. Mao’s localised interpretation of Marxism-Leninism is one of the core factors contributing to the Chinese Communist Party’s victory over the Guomindang in the Chinese Civil War.

Figure 1. “Long Live the Invincible Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought!” (1967), Unknown

Background

Marxism

Figure 2. “Karl Marx” (1875), John Jabez Edwin Mayall

Marxism is a philosophy first outlined in detail by Karl Marx, that looks at societal, political and economical problems through the lens of conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat². In a modern sense, the bourgeoisie is seen as the capitalist ruling class—individuals in class that have often accumulated large amounts of capital by exploiting the proletariat to further solidify or improve their economic position in society. The proletariat, on the other hand, are the working class, who do not own the means of production, and whose only means of surviving is by selling their labour-power³ for a wage or salary. This struggle is at the core of classical Marxist philosophy.

Leninism

Figure 3. “Vladimir Lenin” (1920), Pavel Semyonovich Zhukov

Lenin became the leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. This organisation was a political party that united various factions of the Russian Empire on the concepts and ideology put forward by Marx’s writings. While initially, it appeared that Lenin would stick to the core philosophy of classical Marxism, by the time he came into power, it became clear that his philosophy deviated from Marx’s. While both believed that the proletariat was exploited under capitalism⁴, Marx believed that the transition from capitalism to communism would come immediately through the proletariat gaining class consciousness—that is, the understanding that they were being exploited, solely to the benefit of the capitalists—and overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, Lenin believed that class consciousness “could not be expected to manifest itself as a “reflex” of prevailing economic conditions”¹, and that transitioning Russia to a socialist system—where the means of production were state-owned—would be necessary before completing the evolution into communism.

However, in 1921, as a response to the famine and unrest that began rearing its head—which led to Russia’s GNI falling to a third of the level it had been prior to the start of the Russian Civil War—Lenin instituted the “New Economic Policy”, whereby the surplus of the peasantry’s farm produce was not confiscated and redistributed by the state but was instead (for a fee) retained by the peasantry to be sold. They were also allowed to hire labourers. This policy essentially pivoted the initial state-socialist organisation of the economy into a state-capitalist organisation of the economy.

Maoism

Lenin saw that his revolution was failing, and decided that he needed to inspire his people by showing them a successful revolution. So the Comintern decided that China, itself in a state of political turmoil from the fall of the Qing dynasty and the increasing regionalism after Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916, would be the perfect place to foment revolution. This led to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1920. After Mao joined the CCP’s and GMD’s “united front”, he quickly rose to become the face of the party.

The differences between Maoism & Marxism

Figure 4. “Unknown” (n.d.), Unknown

It’s never been clear as to the extent of Mao’s academic understanding of Marx’s teachings in his early days as a young revolutionary leader because much of his early writing has been modified retrospectively. In fact, there is more clear evidence of him being influenced by Sun Yat-Sen’s (who was the GMD leader at the time) ideas, especially the “Three Principles of the People” than there are of him referencing Marx directly during this period⁵. The Comintern did not have a problem with this, as one of the purposes of getting China to revolt was to prevent capitalist nations that relied on imperialism to exploit the markets and resources of developing nations, which would, in turn, embolden the international proletariat to overthrow the forces exploiting them during the seemingly inevitable international revolution.

Despite China being just another piece in the Comintern’s plans, Mao saw the nation as an integral part of the international revolution. But 1920s urban China largely consisted of people who would be considered bourgeoisie. Mao recognised this problem and redefined the meaning of the proletariat to include intellectuals, students and petite bourgeoisie. Mao also added peasantry to his definition of the proletariat, This gave the CCP numbers for their overthrow of the ruling class, despite the essence of Marx’s definition of the proletariat (workers whose only possession of economic significance is their labour-power) being lost in translation.

Even in Mao’s writings during the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, Mao reaffirms his commitment to Sun Yat-Sen’s Three People’s Principles saying “our Party is ready to fight for their complete realization”⁶. Any Marxist ideology was secondary to this primary goal and only served to advance closer to realising these original principles. Even in 1949, as Mao acceded to power, he allowed the continued production of commodities by private owners, allowing them to hire labourers. Ownership of the land was and by large the same, with the redistribution only landowners who were members of the GMD.

Mao was a talented strategist, who understood that utilising Marxist ideology without adapting it to suit the needs of the CCP would mean that the revolution would fail. His adaptations of the ideology to mobilise the peasantry and intellectuals were key to the success of the CCP in the Chinese Civil War.

Bibliography

Gregor, A. James. “Classical Marxism and Maoism: A Comparative Study.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 52, no. 2 (April 19, 2019): 81–91. ↩ ↩²
“Marxism: Theory, Effects, and Examples,” Investopedia, accessed October 17, 2021, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marxism.asp. ↩
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 3 vols., 1867, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm. ↩
Alexander Finnegan, “The Differences between Marx and Lenin in Five Sentences,” Medium (blog), May 14, 2019, https://medium.com/@comradefinnegan/the-differences-between-marx-and-lenin-in-de7624824531. ↩
Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 1. 9 vols. Franklin Book Company, 1977. ↩
Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 3. 9 vols. Franklin Book Company, 1977. ↩

Nudity vs Nakedness in Photography

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing began as an investigation of art and different ways that audiences interact with art. After being released as a four-part television series in 1972, Berger followed up with a book adaptation that explored the topic brought up in the series in even more depth. However, one essay had a particularly lasting, massive influence on the way female nudes are analysed and understood by audiences. In the essay, he argues that because of societal conventions, “man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies” (Berger, 1973), whereas “a woman’s presence…defines what can and cannot be done to her” and that these conventions affect the way that audiences interact with images of nude females, often rendering the female subject of an image into a more submissive role.

Figure 1. “Max after surfing” (1939), Olive Cotton

In the essay, Berger makes a point of outlining the difference between nudity and nakedness. He argues that to be nude is to be seen by others as an object and not as a person, whereas nakedness implies a conscious revealing of oneself. He simplifies this idea by saying “Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.” (Berger, 1973). Berger then moves on to point out the distinction between nude artworks and artworks of naked women, by saying that artworks of naked women often leave no room for the audience (as the subject of the photo is often a loved one), relegating them to the purely passive role of a spectator. This is the category that Olive Cotton’s 1939 picture ‘Max after surfing’ fits into. The subject of the photo, Max Dupain, was one of Cotton’s childhood friends, and they were both briefly married to each other for about two years, from 1939 to 1941. This photo was taken during the early months of their marriage, a period during which Cotton had stopped working at her studio to assume a more domestic role in their marriage. In the picture, Dupain’s face is obscured by a dark shadow, with only his bare torso and arms visible. His crumpled shirt is slung over a panel of some kind and his hand clutches a half-smoked cigarette.

Figure 2. “Derrick Cross (1983)”, Robert Mapplethorpe

In the first essay from Ways of Seeing, Berger describes an artistic image as the result of the artist’s particular perspective of a subject— “a record of how X had seen Y” (Berger, 1973) as put by Berger—and this image is a clear example of that. Robert Mapplethorpe’s work often documented the underground gay subculture that was prevalent in New York City in the 70s. However, by the 80s, his work had shifted to focus more on the nude portraits of male models, usually in a BDSM-esque scenario. This photo arose out of this era of Mapplethorpe’s work and is one of many photos published in ‘The Black Book’, a collection of photos depicting black men in erotic scenarios. Many of these images only portray segments of the body, often obscuring the subject’s face or cropping it out entirely. This led to a fair amount of criticism, such as this line from a recent New York Times retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work, which described ‘The Black Book’s portrayal of the black body as “invasively scrutinized, sexualized, pacified, directed to sit, stand, be silent” (Cotter, 2016). Mapplethorpe’s work has played a pivotal role in the debate of censorship of art as well as federal funding for art programs especially on an occasion where one of his exhibitions was deemed to be too obscene by The Corcoran Gallery of Art and was cancelled resulting in major controversy.

The clearest similarity in both images is that they are both images where the male subject’s face is obscured, in the case of ‘Max after surfing’, by a shadow, and in the case ‘Derrick Cross’, by the turning away of Cross’s body. This has the effect of directing the subject’s attention away from the spectator, the lens of the camera, thereby forcing the audience out of the role of a participant and into the role of an onlooker. As Berger puts it, “The spectator can witness their relationship – but he can do no more: he is forced to recognize himself as the outsider he is.” (Berger, 1973).

Both photographers have also posed their subjects in such a way that their bodies have a slight bend to them, and the “masculinity” of the subjects has been emphasised to the audience, albeit in different ways. This is related to an idea proposed in the introduction to Berger’s essay, in which he discusses the impact of societal conceptions of masculinity and femininity, where he states that a man’s presence is “dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.” (Berger, 1973). Both pictures attempt to convey a different presence of power—with Mapplethorpe’s image conveying an appreciation and promise of physical power. The most obvious difference between both images is the artist’s overall intent, which is most clearly communicated by the amount and type of nudity present in the photo. Cotton’s intention seems to be to document a loved one of hers at a particular place in time, whereas Mapplethorpe intends to celebrate and fetishize the figure of the black male.

Another core difference comes in the way that the subjects are posed for the camera, which also communicates the intention of the photo. Derrick Cross’ body is treated more like a sculpture, to be posed and manipulated to Mapplethorpe’s desire, whereas Cotton’s posing of Dupain feels less staged, and as a result, Dupain seems to be more natural and relaxed thereby making the audiences’ relation to Dupain a more empathetic human one. However, since Cross’ body is treated as more of sculpture (e.g., something to gawk at, rather than as a human being), that measure of humanity ascribed to Dupain by the audience is ripped away from Cross.

Berger’s work was revolutionary when it was first released in the 1970s and is still used as a basis of art critique to this day. However, after analysing these artworks, it becomes clear that the dividing lines between types of nude photographs do not just come in the gender of the subject, but rather in the intent of the photographer. Mapplethorpe’s intent was to fetishize (like most nude artworks of female subjects), whereas Cotton’s intent was to document her perspective of a loved one.

Bibliography

Berger, J. (1973). Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books.
Cotter, H. (2016, March 31). Why Mapplethorpe Still Matters. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/arts/design/why-mapplethorpe-still-matters.html

This essay was originally written for a school assignment back in June, I just forgot that I actually had a website until today.

A [Rainy] Day In The City

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is a short, observational documentary shot for a year 11 session 2 documentary project. My original idea was to shoot a documentary about busking, however on the day we shot (17/07/21), it was rainy, and so we had to come up with something else quick. This is the result. Edited in four hours from 12:21am-4:33am (20/08/21), fueled by an odd mix of Mango Loco and sleep deprivation.

credits

directed and edited by: Emmanuel Harish Menon

shot and produced by: Julian Taylor

with thanks to:

Erica Fenwick
Vinod Menon
Premila Gopallen
Narrabundah College

music:

Pipe-Space by Pipe-eye
People Move Along by Pipe-eye
Cosmic Blip I by Pipe-eye

A Brief Essay About 2008's Synecdoche, New York

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful, beautiful film. Its slow incorporation of increasingly surrealistic and abstract visuals makes it the perfect “tutorial” film for someone (like me) who has never seen any surrealist works before. Charlie Kaufman utilises simple, down-to-earth characters to explore larger-than-life themes and motifs such as the futility of the endless endeavour to capture life in art. The performances delivered by the people who play these characters are one of a kind and Phillip Seymour Hoffman embodies the main character in an irresistibly arresting manner. The gorgeous visuals in the film also complement the story marvellously.

Before I go any further, I just wanna say that I know that this is formatted kinda like an essay and that I did use the word “essay” in the title. It’s not an essay. It’s more of a (somewhat) spontaneous profession of love for an overwhelmingly gorgeous film, with some reasoning added on the side to justify this love. By doing this, I’m gently forcing myself to look deeper into the film and the subtextual meaning contained within.

The film’s slow ramp-up into surrealism can be likened to a parent holding their child’s hand as their child slowly learns to walk. Eventually, the movie does let go, but it’s at a point where it knows that you as the viewer will feel safe enough to follow along without any support. The film begins in a seemingly mundane situation—a father dealing with the pressures of family life. The fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson describes the introductory aspect of a story as making a series of promises to the person/s consuming your story. These promises give the audience an indication of everything in your story, from the tone to the plot to the visual style. In this case, the film seems to be promising a story that explores the dramatic tensions of family life. So how does Kaufman shatter the limitations of this promise without jarring the audience?

Well, the truth is that I’m not entirely sure that he does shatter the limitations of the promise. In fact, I’m not even sure that a promise has limitations. However, the seed of the promise must still be fulfilled, and one could easily argue that it is. After all, the cast and crew of the play do function as a sort of family for Caden. But Kaufman transcends this promise, moulding and stretching it with every scene, and the film eventually becomes a film about the dramatic tensions of life. As Roger Ebert put it in his review of this film “the subject of ‘Synecdoche, New York’ is nothing less than human life and how it works”.

Thematically, this film is a gold mine. What film wouldn’t be, when it explores literally life itself? To me, the most interesting aspect of this film is the way it portrays the futility of Caden’s artistic dream of replicating every single detail of human life in his play. Caden is (intentionally) a faceless protagonist. He exists as a placeholder for the viewer to insert themselves into. So when he attempts to achieve his goal of mounting a play that captures every aspect of his life and every aspect of every person in his life and every aspect of every person that is related to every person in Caden’s life and so on and on, we root for him to succeed. We root for ourselves to succeed.

Obviously, we never do. Such a goal is impossible. But that is beside the point. It is the journey that matters, not the destination. It has been repeatedly noted online that this is a film about the cyclical nature of life and death, that life is tied into death and that death is tied into life. Synecdoche is about that, but it takes it so much further. This film functions as a cautionary tale, a warning that we should not attempt to capture and preserve life (as that is and of itself a futile act) and that we should instead experience it and live it.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in this film is brilliant and vital. I would go so far as to say that if his performance had been any less perfect, the entire film would not work. As I said earlier, Caden is the audience’s entry point into this film. A common problem with “entry points” such as this one arises from the extent to which the character is given definition. If they are too defined, the audience will not be able to insert themselves into the character’s situation, whereas if they are too faceless, the audience will see them as bland and uninteresting. Now, some of the responsibility is down to the writing for sure, but a large proportion of this responsibility falls down to the actor’s performance.

Hoffman walks this line without making a single misstep. The subtlety with which he portrays Caden and the control over everything that he demonstrates is utterly stunning. He manages to make Caden a character that could very well be a human person that exists now, while simultaneously imbuing him with the aforementioned unmoulded wax figure feel. I am completely unsure as to how Hoffman does this. I have no skill in acting whatsoever, and any observation I could make on this would most likely be wrong. Having said this, I think (and I really, really, really, want to stress think) that it’s due to the fact that when he plays Caden, Hoffman only operates within a certain range of very subtle, slightly muted expressions of the character’s emotions.

We sometimes see films that do not necessarily use the primarily visual medium of cinema to its full extent, and we are sometimes left wondering if the film’s plot would’ve been better suited to the format of a novel. This is not the case with Synecdoche, New York. Synecdoche uses its visuals to pack the film with themes and ideas that are almost never explicitly alluded to by the characters. An example of this is the burning house which Hazel purchases. It seemingly does not have any connection to the rest of the story and is only explicitly referenced by the characters in the scene once.

I really believe that everyone should watch this film at least once. I know that Synecdoche could potentially be viewed as depressing by some, but nobody could say that this is a boring film. There’s just too much subtle stuff going on any one point in time for anyone to be bored. I often say that those “dry” masterpieces are only dry because the filmmakers only gave thought to the subtext, and little to no thought was given to the “text” itself. This film is the opposite of a dry masterpiece. Even if you don’t care about the subtextual meaning, you will be drawn in by the human-centred conflict that is at the core of it all.

Breathless (1960) & Jules et Jim (1962)

Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a subscriber to Now You See It on YouTube, a channel that posts these amazingly well-edited, informative video essays once every month. Their most recent video, titled “The Movie That Changed Movies” discussed 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, and it’s undeniable impact on American cinema. They also mentioned the impact that the French New Wave had on Bonnie and Clyde and pointed out two in particular: Breathless, a film by Jean-Luc Godard, as well as, Jules et Jim, a film by François Truffaut.

I knew absolutely nothing about the French New Wave movement. So, I decided to learn about it. Following along with the principle that was outlined in my guide to double features, which stated that “the double feature [is] a way of learning — and thinking — about movies” (a quote taken from this article, written by James Hoberman), I decided that I would screen a double feature of Breathless and Jules et Jim for myself.

Since this is the first of (hopefully) many blog posts detailing a completed double feature, I’m going to attempt to set a template up that allows me to efficiently go about the process of analysing a double feature.

Opinions

Breathless (1960)

I didn’t really find this particular film that appealing on a story level, but knowing it’s influence on modern cinema, I spent most of my time analysing the film, which admittedly diverted some of my attention away from the story more than once. The film’s script is too aimless for too long, which led to it losing my attention quite early on.

Jean Seberg delivers a fantastic performance throughout this film, even if her characterisation is a bit messy (apparently hiring her cost the film a sixth of its entire budget but, in my opinion, it’s money well spent).

The discontinuous editing utilised in this film is fantastic, adding to the intensity and frenetic energy that this film seems to have droves of. One particular scene that stands out in my mind is the scene where Jean Seberg’s character has a discussion with another journalist (watch it here). Godard literally cuts out all the breaths taken while this other guy was delivering his line of dialogue!

Jules et Jim (1962)

I loved Jules and Jim and I’m extremely thankful that I saw this after watching Breathless. It uses some similar techniques to Breathless, but often in a more refined and nuanced manner. The script also doesn’t wander as often, which allowed it more time to devote towards its inquiry of its central themes. The film spans at least 20 years and yet we seem to hurtle through it. Many major events happen off-screen, and the short snippets of voice-over that we get to explain those events are delivered to us at a breakneck pace, from an unnamed and unseen narrator, who feels like a character (albeit an unexplored one) in and of himself.

There is so much poetry visible in the cinematography of this film. I feel like I could watch this (for the first time) with the sound off and no subtitles, and I would still understand the film, because so much is shown, and so little said.

The three main actors individually deliver fantastic performances, but it’s when these performances come together perfectly that we really begin to feel like these people are their characters. Oskar Werner plays Jules as a quietly resigned pushover, while Henri Serre plays Jim with a strong determination, a determination which is matched only by Jeanne Moreau’s Catherine, who is played as a free-spirited willful woman. When they’re all on screen together, this film ascends to a whole other level and we, as an audience, just sit there riveted, with our eyes glued to the screen, watching these ~~characters~~ people live their lives.

Links

Themes

Breathless and Jules et Jim share quite themes. One of these themes is the manipulation of love. Both films are engrossed with this concept, but both approach it from completely different perspectives. Breathless empathises with Patricia, the female lead, and we clearly see Michel manipulating her. However, his reasons for manipulation are nefarious, he only says that he loves her because he wants to have sex with her. In Jules et Jim on the other hand, we see both Jules and Jim being manipulated by Catherine as she shuttles back and forth between multiple men. Unlike Michel, Catherine’s reasons for doing so are not nefarious, indeed, the film seems to suggest that it is an uncontrollable aspect of her base nature.

Production & Techniques

The production of Breathless is pretty much considered mythical at this point so I won’t really go too deep into it here. If you want, you can read more about it here. There isn’t as much information available about the production of Jules et Jim but there is some available here.

The only similarity in technique that I noticed while watching was that handheld shots were used quite often, which imbued the film with a highly fluid feel.

Cast & Crew

Interestingly—and I didn’t find this out until I had finished watching the film—two major crew members were extremely key to the production of both films. The first was François Truffaut, who actually conceived the story of Breathless after reading a newspaper article about a man who had killed a cop, after stealing a car so that he could visit his sick mother. François Truffaut when on to write and direct Jules et Jim just four years later.

Another shared link between the films is Raoul Cotard, who served as cinematographer for both films. Cotard was initially “forced” onto Godard by the producer of Breathless, but ended up collaborating with Godard for a large portion of his films.

Conclusion

I quite enjoyed this double feature, and I definitely learned quite a lot about film history and film. I think this process of learning how to catalogue my thoughts into an understandable form is extremely helpful in consolidating and solidifying my knowledge. I never know how to end these things so…

I should probably just stop writing.

Double Features: A Guide

Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m in quarantine, with a wealth of time on my hands, so I thought I’d post something on my criminally underused (and recently redesigned) blog. Since I’m planning on doing a French New Wave double feature soon (it’s inspired by a “Now You See It” video essay I just watched), I decided: Why not learn about double features before screening one for myself?

A quick disclaimer, if I may. The title of this isn’t meant to indicate that I am an expert on double features. I enjoy trying to learn as much as I can about a specific thing and I find that it is the best way for me to learn new things. Writing this blog post is a way for me to consolidate as much of that knowledge as I can by rephrasing and framing it in new ways.

What is a double feature?

A double feature, or double bill, as it is sometimes referred to, is a back-to-back screening of two feature films. These films are standalone and have no relation in characters or in title. You wouldn’t, for example, watch Taken 2 after Taken 1 (if you were planning on doing that, you’re too far gone for anybody to save).

History of the double feature

The double-feature came about during The Great Depression as a product of higher unemployment rates and smaller incomes. Theatres, watching screening attendances decline, started selling two films for the price of one ticket. This had the intended effect. Sales went up. Audiences escaped into the cheerful fantasy depicted in The Wizard of Oz and were riveted by Gone with the Wind’s romanticisms.

Double features also brought about the creation of the B movie. I could write a whole other blog post about the B movie, so I’ll keep it short. Studios had noticed that double features were selling extremely well. However, they were running out of new films to include in their double features. Thus began the production of B movies. Usually, studios would get inexperienced crew members and new actors, as well as actors whose popularity had waned. They would then put them on a film that was usually made using whatever sets were available at the time.

If an independent theatre wanted to show a studio’s A movies, they were forced to rent all the studio’s films from that particular season (including the B movies). This is a practice known as block booking. Block booking is another one of the reasons that double features were so popular at the time. Theatres would not have been able to show these B movies by themselves, they simply would not have sold enough tickets. Therefore, they lumped them together with an A movie, often placing the B movie before the A movie.

In 1948, a historic case came along that completely changed Hollywood (for the better). United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. put an end to the practice of block booking (among other things), which they ruled was in violation of United States antitrust law. Although many drive-ins and independent theatres kept showing double features, the B movie’s slot would generally be occupied by a re-release of an older A movie.

The double feature in modern times

As a result of the combination of the rise of streaming and the collective lowering of our average attention span, double features are nowhere to be seen in cinemas. Often, however, some cinemas will choose to show two James Bond films or two horror films back to back. I know that one of the theatres near me did a Studio Ghibli double feature a while back, which was cool (but then they delayed a bunch of good movies just to show The Rise of Skywalker and I lost all respect for them).

Thankfully, however, due to physical media and various streaming services, the very same ones that killed the double feature, the double feature does live on in our homes.

How do I create a good double feature?

Again, I would like to reiterate that I am by no means an expert on creating a good double feature, this is just what I’ve learned over the course of a couple days of research. I’ve also added in some of my own ideas that seem to logically fit into what makes a good double feature.

First off, let's get the "musts" out of the way

Must contain two films
Must not share a franchise
Must be shown back to back (obviously you can have an intermission of sorts, but, I mean, if you split up your double feature over two days, is it really still a double feature?)

Now, for what makes a good double feature. Although a double feature can be made up of two completely disjoint films (e.g. watching one of the Harry Potter films and then watching The Hateful Eight), the two films shown in a double feature should be linked, whether through directors, actors, genres or themes.

Each film in a double feature should complement the other, enhancing your understanding of the film and the techniques used within the film. In a New York Times article that I read while working on this post, Mr Hoberman says that “the double feature was a way of learning — and thinking — about movies”. Change that “was” to “is”, and you’ve got yourself an amazing guiding principle for putting together double feature.

HELP! I still can’t think of a double feature!

Fantastic Mr Fox & Isle of Dogs
- A Wes Anderson animated double feature. I haven’t personally done this double feature, although I have watched both of these excellent films.
Taxi Driver & Nightcrawler
- A double-feature containing unnerving, mentally unstable characters. Again, I haven’t actually done this double feature, although both of these films are fantastic.
Letterboxd User Recommendations
- Each odd-numbered film is linked to the next even-numbered film
Edgar Wright’s recommendations
- Since everything went into lockdown, Edgar Wright has been posting double features once every couple of days. In fact, this article was partially inspired by his tweeting.
ACMI’s Virtual Cinémathèque
- The Melbourne Cinematheque has partnered with ACMI to deliver a double feature every Wednesday. They add annotations and introductions where possible.
Check Reddit!