Intercut Issue Four

issue two / static

issue 4

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INTERCUT: Issue FOUR

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Intercut Editor-in-Chief Megan west Assignments Editor Kira Newmark Art Director Sariel Friedman Designer hannah cooper Editors Arnaav Bhavanani sophia dienstag Julia kahn Kalee Kennedy sarah lucente Annie Ning Beatrix Herriott O’Gorman Financial Manager Kira newmark Illustration hannah cooper Cover Art lauren weiner Thank You cfilm Paladin Printing the Green fund

Contents 6

The Trans and the Transcendent: The Wachowskis as Queer Voices at the Multiplex

Jack Warren 6

Movies I Will Not Watch

Anabelle Doilner 11

Life is a State of Mind: In Praise of Harold & Maude (1971)

Theo Matza

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Garden State of Mind

Hannah Ratner

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The Marriage of Maria Braun: Female Agency and Desire in the Films of The New German Cinema

Cult Noir: Explaining the Rising U.S. Golden Age of TV Experimental Cinema in Paris: A Conversation with Diana Vidrascu on Viewing & Distribution

22 Beatrix Herriott O’Gorman

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25 Kalee Kennedy 25 Sam Leter

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From the editor This Thanksgiving, I split off from my family in hopes of avoiding a splintered holiday. I was convinced that I could discreetly bow out of this particular gathering, avoid the late-November chill that eats your insides, avoid answering well-intentioned questions about my life at the dining room table. My mom visited me before my flight, and we walked side-by-side in the grocery store, taking turns shoving a cart with a broken wheel down aisles and aisles of food. “Maybe I’ll go to the movies by myself this year,” she said, once we were in the parking lot.

When my siblings and I were young, my mom and dad frequently went to the movies solo. They took shifts; one parent would stay home with the kids while the other would go to the local AMC. They would switch off and discuss the movie later. I imagine them at the dinner table, in bed, in the car, their individual experiences morphed into a shared memory.

Her quiet, out-loud thought, Maybe I’ll go to the movies by myself, reminded me of this, reminded me of how traditions sometimes transform subtly into something else entirely, maybe a happy evolution, maybe a sad echo of the past. Sometimes it’s not so much a transformation as a break, clean-off.

What has this got to do with Intercut, you’re saying. What has this got to do with Harold and Maude and experimental cinema and musings on New German Cinema?

Hold your horses, I’m getting there.

I’ve gone to the movies with my family the day after Thanksgiving every year except for this one. We’ve gone to the movies every Christmas Day for as long as I can remember. A rift—of the typical sort—throws the future of this tradition into spiraling no-man’s land.

I imagine my mom at the movies by herself, but it doesn’t seem like such a bad

thing. For starters, I’m a proponent of going to the movies alone. You don’t realize how much of your watching is actually performance until you’ve stripped it all away (a Monday matinee at Metro Movies is almost a guaranteed free theater, if you’d like to try). Secondly, movies have this amazing way of continuing to exist when everything else has gone to shit. When December rolls around, there will be a gazillion showtimes of the next Oscar contender, and you can sit in a packed theater surrounded by strangers or surrounded by your friends and feel comfort in the fact that this tradition, this routine of going to the movies, will be there. The projector will blink to life, the lights will dim, the movie will play. You can text through it, talk through it, cry through it, make out through it, cover your eyes through it, but it will play. And there’s something undeniably good about this.

If I know anything about movies, it is that they are enlightening in the way they see, comforting in the way they distract, tender in the way they understand, useful in the way they serve as a mirror more forgiving than the one in the bathroom. If you go to the movies, if you make a movie, if you watch a movie on your phone on the treadmill, even, you will be given something.

We don’t have a theme for this issue of Intercut, and that’s mostly because I thought that lumping the thoughtful, personal reflections from our writers together and slapping a single word on them could only be reductive. These essays speak to the way making and watching moving images teaches us about ourselves. Maybe that’s through the Wachowskis’ legacy of queer blockbusters, maybe that’s through seeing your hometown in the background of a fleeting shot in Garden State, maybe that’s through thinking about how the rise of a not-so-niche television genre reflects on audience desires today. The writers in this issue have come together to create a body of work that reflects the gifts that cinema gives to its creators and consumers.

Movies live even when other things don’t, and for that, I am grateful.

Megan West Editor-in-chief

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the trans and the transcendent: the wachowskis as queer voices at the multiplex Jack Warren

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fter eleven years of being host to the creation of films like Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and Sense8, Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Chicago production house is closing. Like many of the worlds they built, it was a place where people came together to bring the fantastical into reality. “Lilly and I have always tried to build family wherever we worked,” Lana Wachowski said in a statement to Chicago Business. “And for years this building has been that family’s home.” By all ac-

counts, the place was magical, with Lana’s wife, Karin Wachowski, once calling it a “dream space”. Even the street it’s located on, Ravenswood Avenue, sounds like the kind of underground location where characters in a Wachowski movie might escape to. Escape - whether it be from evil machines, space princess, or the monotony of the everyday life - is a common thread throughout their filmography, and seeing an enclave for their unique creative vision shutter its windows is disheartening.

Families and dreamscapes are interwoven throughout the Wachowski filmography, in form and content. Theirs is a unique collection of movies, as is befitting voices so unique within Hollywood cinema. Gender non-conforming directors and producers are on the rise in the indie film circuit and the streaming world, but both Lana and Lilly Wachowski stand alone as trans filmmakers whose films have stormed the box office worldwide. With Lana transitioning shortly after the release 7

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of Speed Racer in 2008 and Lilly transitioning after the first season of Sense8 in 2016, the analysis of their work as part of a queer cinematic tradition is relatively recent. Yet, their greatest commercial success, The Matrix, has been associated with the worst factions of masculinity. The Columbine massacre has been linked to both the film’s violence, as well as the long leather coats worn by Neo and Trinity.

The men’s rights movement has adopted Morpheus’ Red Pill— the conduit through which Neo’s eyes are opened to the Matrix— as a symbol of enlightenment to the the loss of male supremacy under the evils of feminism.

However, while The Matrix may be dressed in the bullets and combat typically associated with militant masculinity, liberation is at the film’s core. The battle for freedom of expression can be felt throughout the Wachowski’s filmography, just as it can be witnessed in the lives of the women who created it.

Released in 1996, Bound is the feature debut of Lana and Lilly Wachowski, and is also the most divergent from the rest of their filmography. On the level of screenplay, the world in which the characters live appears to be 8

our own, albeit seen through the seedier lens of a 90s neo-noir.

The cinematography, however, is among the Wachowski’s most stylistic, beginning with an overhead shot of the interior of a closet, after which the camera floats down, untethered, past clothes hangers, shoes, rope, until it finds one of the film’s two main characters, Corky (Gina Gershon) with her mouth gagged and her hands tied.

Then, it cuts back in time, to the interior of a blood red elevator.

We see Corky clad in leather biker jacket, along with her soon to be lover, Violet (Jennifer Tilly), and Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), Violet’s husband. Cinematographer Bill Pope (who the Wachowskis would later collaborate with on the Matrix trilogy) endows the film with the look of a pulpy comic book, featuring saturated colors and extreme cutins of everything from buttons pressed to badges flashed to guns pulled. There may be no science fiction flair or fantasy magic, but the film is anything but realist.

The liberation Violet and Corky endeavor towards is more directly tied to reality than it is for other Wachowski protagonists, whose struggles are often wrapped up in mass conspiracy or planetary warfare They’re lovers, attempting to escape Violet’s violent husband, and the world of crime in which he’s entangled. More broadly, the film is about women escaping the control of men. Unlike the two titans of neo-noir, Fatal

Attraction and Basic Instinct, Bound has no femme fatales. While Violet’s intentions towards Corky are initially thrown into question, their affair is revealed to be purely motivated by a desire to be with one another. Whereas most neo-noirs (and many noirs before them) are grim outlooks on the inescapability of desire and its disastrous consequences, Violet and Corky are able to escape the yolk of oppression via their attraction to one another.

The film ends with Corky saying: “You know what the difference between you and me is, Violet?” After Violet answers that she doesn’t know, Corky says “Me, neither” and the two drive off in a new red pick-up truck, dressed alike in black sunglasses, black leather jackets and shiny black nail polish. They are united in liberation, with Violet leaving behind the constraints of a heterosexual family unit for a queer one.

The Matrix is—at least on the surface—far more straight.

When compared to the fight scenes in other science fiction or fantasy films of comparable cultural significance, the action bristles with a more visceral sense of heightened violence that feels distinctly macho; hand-to-hand combat and gunfights with automatic weaponry feel more vicious than lightsaber duels and wizard battles. In addition to a greater degree of brutality, The Matrix is also distinguished by a greater degree of villainy. The bad guys aren’t hid-

ing away on the horizon of Mordor, or even in the commanding offices of a galactic empire. In The Matrix, evil controls everything. Neo doesn’t have to stave off a growing army or overthrow a sith lord—he has to break free from a false reality forced upon him since birth. From a trans perspective, this struggle is—as they say—relatable. Neo’s world feels dysphoric, painted with a dark greens and washed out yellows that give the appearance of drained faces lost in a haze of discomfort. The first half of the film is riddled with elements of body horror, from the mechanical worm that burrows into his belly button to the mechanical nodes on his neck and wrists after he is unhooked from the system. The victims of the Matrix are living the literalization of a queer nightmare; They are bodies controlled by an invisible system far beyond anyone’s control. It is an ancient, omniscient force (the Architect in Reloaded reveals that they’re living in its sixth cycle) that can only be broken through collective work to individually open people’s eyes to the oppressive forces controlling them. This evil is akin to the one that prevents Violet and Corky from obtaining happiness in Bound, filtered through a science fiction lense. The primary differences are that Violet and Corky only have to liberate themselves, and they can do so by killing one patriarch. Neo has to free the whole world from the straights machines.

Despite being their greatest hit, The Matrix in fairly unique among the Wachowski’s filmography, with its closest parallel being the far less beloved and somehow even more strange, Jupiter Ascending. There are fewer undertones of dysphoria, and it’s generally lighter than The Matrix films, but it shares a number of thematic overlaps. Both take aim at the evils of bureaucracy— Jupiter through a series of strange science fiction hoops the protagonist must jump through in order to inherit her royal title, and The Matrix through the civil service suit-and-tie uniform of the film’s primary machine antagonist, Agent Smith. Both are about individual heroes—Neo and Jupiter—who find a sort-of family unit in their quest for freedom, as well as a sweetheart.

After being shot by Agent Smith, Neo is resurrected by a kiss from Trinity, and it is only after this that he is able to control the matrix and become the One. In the case of Jupiter: her adventure only begins after she is rescued by the swashbuckling space soldier Caine Wise, whose DNA is spliced with that of a canine, and whom she falls in love with (“I love dogs!” she says, upon learning this).

Both Neo and Jupiter are Chosen Ones, born into lives of relative squalor and destined for greatness. While Jupiter may not have to contend with the oppressiveness of a computer simulation, she has to scrub rich people’s toilets, which is probably

almost as bad. After discovering that bees refuse to sting her, she learns that she is the queen of Earth, (we are informed that “bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty”) which means she has the monarchical claim that can prevent Emperor Balem Abrasax from harvesting the planet. The hidden potential within both Neo and Jupiter, shrouded by the doldrums of everyday life, is a common trope across film, from Harry Potter to Luke Skywalker to Cinderella.

The liberation that comes with uncovering a hidden identity is a frequent theme in queer narratives of self-recognition and coming out. For Jupiter and Neo to find their power through the self-actualization that comes from love and found family is exemplary of the Wachowskis leaning into the queer undertones of a mythic narrative, even if the characters are presented as cisgender and straight. For their queer characters, the kind of self-discovery/coming-out plot common to queer narratives is never told explicitly, and Bound and Sense8 both make a point of featuring queer characters whose queerness does not define their narrative. Even if the Wachowskis may have personal experience with coming out, they prefer not to make that aspect of queer life the subject of their films, leaning instead towards stories about stopping bullets and defeating space emperors.

Speed Racer (star of, you guessed it, Speed Racer) is unlike 9

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both Jupiter and Neo because he has always known his fate; to drive race cars. His world is full of hyper-saturated colors and digitally constructed dreamscapes. Stylistically, it dives even deeper into unreality than Bound, emulating the manga and anime it takes inspiration from. In Speed Racer, Speed does not have to discover that he is a racer, it’s his literal name. “All your son talks about, all he seems capable of thinking about,” says an elementary school teacher, “is automobile racing.” Instead, Speed must fight the capitalist machine for the right to be recognized for what he is. The villain of the film, E.P. Arnold Royalton, is the CEO of a racing company almost as all-powerful as the matrix, though his corporate buffoonery is far more satirical than any of the antagonists in previous Wachows10

ki films. Speed must struggle against the system of corruption that pre-determines the winner of every race, so his victory isn’t only tied into his own success, but also the legitimacy of sport he loves. In a scene with Speed and his mother, Mom Racer, she tells him that she goes to his races “to watch him make art”. Indeed, the racing sequences are far more focussed on the dazzling visuals than in your typical racing film. While there is enormous tension attached to whether or not Speed crosses the finish line, it is far less about whom he defeats and more about what crazy trick allows him to win, because he isn’t defined by defeating others, but by being the best at the thing he loves.

Speed doesn’t have to become the greatest race car driver in the world because he already is. Instead, he must fight

the powers that be in order to express himself. All he needs to win the Grand Prix title is to sell out to Royalton, but doing so would mean compromising his integrity and leaving behind his family racing team. Films like The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending are about shedding old identities for new, better/more truthful ones, Speed Racer is about fighting for acceptance of the identity he won’t compromise.

Speed’s blood relatives are more important to his journey than other Wachowski protagonists. Jupiter’s family are featured throughout the film, but only as remnants of her life when she wasn’t queen of earth.

The Wachowskis prioritize showcasing the importance of found families in their work: be it the space police Aegis in Jupiter Ascending or the freedom fighting crew of the Nebuchadnezzar in

The Matrix. Even Speed’s family extends beyond that of Mom and Pops Racer and his younger brother Spritle. There’s Sparky, his mechanic, Trixie, his girlfriend, and Chim Chim, Spritle’s pet monkey. Never do Mom and Pops make note of any real difference between the children born to them and the ones adopted into the racing team.

In Cloud Atlas and Sense8 this found family is extended out into the recesses of time and space. Both films are about collectives of people connected by forces beyond their understanding. Sense8 is more temporally grounded, but revolves around more intimate connections. The eight lead characters, or sensates, are all psychically linked, so that they may see what each other see, feel what each other feel, and listen to each other think. While much of the show

is concerned with unravelling the mystery of this connection, it deviates from the puzzlebox narrative common to shows like Lost or Heroes by allowing distraction from the plot in order to focus on moments of warmth and human connection. As might be expected in a Wachowski story, the sensates are being hunted down by an evil corporation, but there are breaks within the sci-fi thriller plot, where the sensates are allowed to enjoy the wonder of their connection to each other, whether that be by working as a team, meeting each other face-to-face, or, on occasion, indulging in giant psychic orgies.

In Cloud Atlas, the characters are scattered across time, from the Pacific Islands in the 19th century to a dystopian future Korea to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. They are loosely con-

nected by reincarnation, but unlike Sense8, the film never explains the mechanics of this bond, instead allowing their stories to brush up against one another by the art each character creates and consumes. One character’s symphony is heard in a record shop forty years after his death, blending with the film’s score, another has his life adapted into a film that inspires an act of rebellion far into the future, and yet another has her words turned into a gospel that shapes a new religion.

While other Wachowski protagonists find families along the way to empowerment and self-actualization, the characters in Sense8 and Cloud Atlas are empowered because of their families. If The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending are about discovering an identity, and Bound and Speed Racer are about fighting for rec11

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ognition or expression of that identity, then Sense8 and Cloud Atlas are about finding others to share it with. The characters in these films aren’t powerful because they stand above the rest, but because they stand together.

It is impossible to know whether or not Lana or Lilly Wachowski expected to be the first trans women to direct a major blockbuster film. By Lana’s account at least, that is not why they began making movies.

In her words: “There are some things we do for ourselves, but there are some things we do for others. I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn’t find anyone like me in the world and it felt like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender

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was less typical than others. If I can be that person for someone else, then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value.”

The Wachowskis’ work may never again have the same cultural impact it had when The Matrix first graced our screens on the cusp of a new millenium, nor the same degree of financial success. The prospect of any future projects at all is in question with no productions slated and talk of retirement echoing in the tabloids. While such news would signal an enormous loss for an industry so desperately in need of new ideas and hopeful visionaries, the Wachowskis would be leaving behind a legacy that mirrors the stories they love to tell.

Like Neo and Jupiter, Lana and Lilly Wachowski found enormous power through a distinct

voice unlike anyone else’s. Like Violet, Corky, and Speed, they fought for expression of that voice in a landscape that would have preferred they conform.

And like the casts of Cloud Atlas and Sense8, they found a chorus of others to share in their artistic dreams. The Wachowskis made films about transcending the ugliness of reality through a commitment to yourself and others, about fighting for a brighter world through bitter struggle and loss and finally glorious success, about looking inwards and discovering you’re so much more than they told you you were or could be. This is the story the Wachowskis chose to tell, and while it may not have the neatness of an end credits, it is the one they lived.

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life is a state of mind: in praise of harold & maude (1971) Theo Matza

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“Life is a state of mind.”

Not only are these the last spoken words in Being There, Hal Ashby’s witty, peculiar 1979 masterpiece, but they also impart to audiences the lesson that the regrettably underrecognized American director of the 1970s asserts in his greatest work, Harold and Maude. The filmmaker’s non-conformist, free-spirited attitudes reverberate throughout the dark comedy, notably in its unforgettable use of music, quietly effective visual style, and most of all, in its eccentriccharacters. Ashby’s movie is so uniquely poignant because his characters grab (or, rather, acquire the capacity to grab) life by the balls, and we are given the privilege of living vicariously through them. These distinct cinematic elements buttress the movie’s emotional, philosophical core.

The director begins to ground his audience in his jubilant, individualist worldview by developing narratives of impressionable characters that initially appear to endure lives of passivity. He then thrusts them into environments or relationships in which they are forced to embrace the beauty that is all around them. There is no better model of this practice than Bud Cort’s Harold. Harold is introduced as a troubled young man who derives pleasure from faking his own death, whether through hanging himself, shooting himself, or lighting himself on fire. Not only does he engage

in these ludicrous acts of faked self-harm, but he spends his days ironically driving around in a hearse and casually attending funerals.

Harold’s lifestyle shifts drastically upon his introduction to the free-spirited, seventy-nine year-old Maude, one of the most memorable characters in American cinema, extraordinarily embodied by the remarkable Ruth Gordon. Maude lives joyfully. She dispels practically all notions of responsibility, authority, and most of all, the idea that there is one appropriate way to conduct oneself, or to view one’s own existence. She spends her days transplanting public trees, playing every instrument, posing nude for sculptors, and stealing other people’s vehicles with no sense of shame. At first glance it would seem ironic that someone who embraces life to this degree would also spend her time at funerals. That said, Maude seemingly regards death as equal in value to life. There is a place for both. Ashby gives us images of Gordon sauntering through graveyards amidst seas of black garb, clad in a bright coat with a yellow umbrella that startles the viewer. She breathes in the fresh air blissfully at these events, as if they were weddings rather than funerals.

There is a radical message here, one that Maude’s character promotes through the film’s final frames. It is that a timely death may be as worthy of celebration as the excitement that can ac-

company life, as long as one has existed and loved only as they have desired to, untied to any conventional notions of responsibility. Thus, an ironic, unexpectedly framed friendship and love affair between these two characters, and an audience’s deep emotional investment in that relationship, becomes a brilliant vehicle for Ashby to advance this philosophical message. Maude teaches Harold to see the world anew.

The filmmaker’s distinct command of the medium creates an audio-visual experience that is powerfully emotional in its conveyance of this message.

Cat Stevens’ soundtrack breathes with the sort of energetic life that Maude embodies, with songs that exude such fitting lyrics as “if you want to sing out, sing out.” This music is imperative to crafting the film’s emotional tone. The same is true of John Alonzo’s masterful camerawork: minimal so as not to draw attention away from the focus on character and performance, but dynamic and detailed enough to visually imply the care-free state of mind that Ashby is advocating. Everything is neatly packaged in an Ashby film to effectively communicate a message that is not experienced as neatly packaged at all.

This approach is powerfully presented in one of the more emotionally affecting scenes in the film, depicting the two protagonists walking through a field of daisies. Just before Cat Ste15

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vens’ heart-wrenching “Where do the Children Play?” ensues, Maude asks Harold what sort of flower he would want to be. He responds that he would like to be one of the patches of daisies that they are presently walking past because “they are all alike.”

Then, in an moving, poetic reply, Maude declares, “No, no no! Some small, some fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have lost some petals, all kinds of observable differences. You see Harold, I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are this--” She points to an individual flower. “--yet, allow themselves to be treated as that,” She motions to the group of flowers.

The music escalates. The camera slowly cranes backward, revealing the two as miniature specs in a plane filled with hundreds of graves. Maude in this moment has spoken almost directly to both Harold and to the audience, encouraging us to acknowledge our inherent worth, regardless of what society and our surroundings expect of us.

Perhaps the viewer’s acquired desire to live like Maude renders this moment one of almost uncontrollable, universal empathy.

The scene marks an imperative shift in the tone of the movie, from a menacing, purely dark satire, to an earnest, philosophically-focused one, and Ashby’s use of film style has cultivated this depth in a manner that is unique and touching.

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The filmmaker does not spoon-feed us every single relevant narrative detail. He knows that subtlety can be utilized for maximal emotional effect. He rather brilliantly implements small visual cues that increase the stakes of the narrative as well as the emotional weight of the interactions of the central couple.

One of the single most brilliant moments of the movie is a brief, three-second insert shot of

numbers tattooed onto Maude’s forearm, revealing that she is a Holocaust survivor. Ashby includes this piece of information to make her character --and her commitment to embracing life-all the more palpable. It proves to us that the unimaginable hardships that Maude has faced have, rather than making her bitter and cynical, informed her carefree outlook. Her philosophy is one born from a direct

confrontation with true horrors, and a subsequent decision to consciously and energetically embrace life.

We all wish we had the courage to live with the honesty and passion that Maude does, as does Harold by the end of the film. The filmmaker never suggests that we cannot. Ashby does not seem to have offered this story merely as a form of escapism or idealism. Rather, the film-

maker may be genuinely suggesting that we can and should play by our own rules. Live your lives however the hell you wish to. It’s an unrealistic proposal, but an inspiring one nonetheless. This is what makes the film so wildly re-watchable. Its fundamental essence is so brilliantly human and emotionally rich. It’s about feeling lousy, lost, and insignificant, and discovering all of the love that there is to give and to

take. We should all love and be loved. We should all watch Harold and Maude.

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garden state of mind Hannah Ratner

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unning home from high school barefoot in the pouring rain, soaked shoes in our hands. Laughing at the feeling of toes on wet dirty pavement. Reclining the seats of Maisie’s car in the parking lot outside Starbucks and watching the windshield fog. The crappy diner I didn’t realize was crappy, eight of us piled into a booth after a half-day of school, asking for eight separate checks. Riding a shopping cart down the hill at Memorial Park. The first warm day of late winter, when it wasn’t really that warm but we took off our jackets on our way home from school anyway, as last week’s snow trickled in the gutters. This is how I like to think of New Jersey.

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I spent my first semester at Wesleyan bugging my roommate to watch Zach Braff’s cult classic indie movie, Garden State, with me, for no good reason except that it takes place in New Jersey. Not just New Jersey, but my part of New Jersey– Essex County, where we identify our hometowns by their exits off the Garden State Parkway. When my roommate finally agreed to watch it with me, I spent most of the movie anticipating the scene where Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, and Peter Sarsgaard drive past my high school. The clock tower that I saw five days a week at 7:15 am blurs by for two seconds, long enough for me to point and say, “That’s my high school!”

I didn’t particularly like high school, although I didn’t particularly hate it either. I spent freshman year afraid to go to class every morning, debilitated by anxiety over school shootings. I can vividly remember sitting in second period Geometry and feeling my stomach drop every time a door slammed in the distance. For most of high school I cycled through periods of anxiety and low self-esteem, but always managed to stay above water. Then senior year brought a mental health crash that left me sleeping during study hall to escape, and spending hours in the office of the school counselor, who seemed to believe that carbs and fresh air could solve anything. She would often prescribe

a quick walk or a bagel to bring back to Calculus with me. I don’t know if these things helped, but it was nice to have somewhere to go.

That’s how I remember high school, and because these were my last four years living in New Jersey full-time, this is, in part, what I think of when I think of New Jersey. It’s easy to forget the first warm days.

In the opening scene of Garden State, Zach Braff’s character, Andrew, is in a plane that’s going down. All around him the other passengers are crying and screaming, but he just stares straight ahead and reaches up to adjust the air conditioner nozzle above his seat.

Andrew wakes up from this dream in a room that is startlingly white and bare. His father is leaving a message on the answering machine. Look, I don’t know how to do this...but you’re gonna need to come home now. Last night...

Your mother died last night, Andrew. She drowned. Andrew, seemingly unaffected, stares up at the ceiling.

He flies back to New Jersey, and the plane does not go down.

I have often wished for a different brain, one that doesn’t have my tendency towards anxiety or sadness. But then I would not be myself; I would be a different person in my body, and the soaked shoes and the crappy diner and the fogged-up windshield would not exist to me, at least not as they do now. If there’s one thing I thank my brain for, it is that it has, with-

out fail, allowed me to feel. At times the predominant feeling has been boredom or apathy, but these are still feelings. And more often than I am apathetic, I am excited, or joyful, or miserable or lonely or panicky.

At a neurologists office back in New Jersey, Andrew meets Sam, a quirky manic-pixie dream-girl compulsive-liar with epilepsy–quite the description, I know. They go to her house, where they bury Sam’s hamster

among the other pet graves in her backyard. He tells her about his mother. She drowned in her bathtub, he says, on Sunday.

“I haven’t cried since I was a little kid. I didn’t cry at my mother’s funeral. I tried, you know? I thought of all the saddest things I could think of.”

A couple days later, as they are falling in love, Andrew and Sam sit in the bathtub that his mother drowned in. He remembers when, as a child, he

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cried in his mother’s lap, and she offered him her sleeve to blow his nose on.

“I remember thinking, even as a little kid, like, wow.

This is love. This is love.”

In a plastic cup, Sam catches Andrew’s first adult tear.

My family’s house in New Jersey has its own pet graveyard– more specifically, a guinea pig graveyard. When my last guinea pig, Minnie, died, my parents buried her with the hat I’d made for her out of an old green t-shirt when we first got her. I didn’t attend Minnie’s funeral– or the funeral for the guinea pig before her–because I felt that it was easier to avoid the pain that burying her would create. The day after she died was windy with freezing rain.

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“What if she’s cold out there?” I said to my dad.

It was silly to feel bad for her, I thought, because I knew she couldn’t feel anything. But that didn’t stop the thought of rain seeping through the dirt and dripping on her, nothing but my hat to keep her warm.

“Fuck, this hurts so much.” The funeral is over, and Andrew’s life, whatever that consists of, is in L.A. He’s leaving behind New Jersey, and Sam.

“Yeah, I know,” says Sam. “But that’s life. If nothing else, that’s life. It’s real, and sometimes it fucking hurts, but it’s sort of all we have.”

On a day during my senior year of high school–maybe October or November–my dad met me as I pulled into the

driveway after spending the evening at my friend’s house. I don’t remember what he said, or what time it was, because the memory is a combination of an image and a feeling, as is often the case.

I followed him to the backyard where he showed me the area he had set up around the guinea pig graves. They were illuminated by two small well lights, with a bunny statue to guard over them. I remember the moon that night, and the smell of the air, and my dad next to me, and suddenly feeling both like crying and smiling.

the marriage of maria braun:

female agency & desire in the films of new german cinema Beatrix Herriott O’Gorman

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he movement known as the New German Cinema began in the 1960s and came to an end roughly after Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s death in the early 1980s. The films of this movement are marked by their deviation from and embrace of traditional national cinema and for the filmmakers they skyrocketed to fame and critical acclaim. The New German Cinema is significant for the way it heralded the emergence

of pioneers like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, among others. I argue here how the presentation of women in films of this period is complicated and revolutionised by a new generation of filmmakers with their fingers on the pulse of a nation in transition.

In her 1988 book The Bonds of Love Jessica Benjamin asks, “Why does femininity appear linked to passivity?” In The Marriage of Maria Braun, and on a broader scale, the

films of the New German Cinema, more generally, femininity is in no way linked to passivity.

In fact I venture that characterisation of the female lead character The Marriage of Maria Braun is distinct because of Fassbinder’s unique commitment to presenting the complexity of women and fore-fronting their agency and power. The presentation of women in the films of New German Cinema as ‘cold’ and unfeeling allows them room to

defy gender expectations and assert themselves in a new modern world. Their agency and control over their own lives is highlighted in these films and made evident through their lack of care and prioritisation of men’s desires. I wish to look at how Maria Braun, as a representative of women in the films of the New German Cinema, confuses and disorients the people around her through her refusal to conform to gender conventions. I

will explore the presentation of female agency in Fassbinder’s 1979 film ‘The Marriage of Maria Braun’ and how Maria defies contemporary expectations of womanhood in Germany.

In Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun we are gifted with a female protagonist who defies categorisation. One of the hallmark features of Maria’s character is that she is direct.

Unlike strong women in earlier Hollywood pictures, within

classic noir films for example, she is not a deceptive seductress who lures men into a spell under false pretences. She tells each of her lovers about her husband and the inevitability of her returning to him. A writer for “Classic Art Films” online blog wrote, “Maria takes advantage of other people's weaknesses and uses her sexuality to get what she wants but she is always honest about doing it.” She has sexual agency, she is certainly not a naive ingenue, but she is also not portrayed as a femme fatale in the traditional sense. In this way she defies the some of the basic tropes of women in film across genres in film history up to this point. In the scene immediately preceding her first visit to her husband Hermann in jail Maria alienates even those closest to her. In response to Maria saying, “I guess I’ve changed a lot,” her friend Betti seems shocked and confused. Betti replies saying “Looking at you nobody could tell what you’ve been through.”

The people around Maria are confused by her behaviour and the way she deals with loss, trauma and longing. Betti, among others, is expecting her to behave in a certain way and carry herself like a woman is supposed to but Maria does not wear her tragedy on her sleeve, she keeps her cards close to her chest and in that way she defies stereotypes of women as hysterical, emotional and irrational. Directly after this scene Fassbinder presents us with another example 23

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24

of his protagonist challenging expectations for women. In the scene Maria and Hermann are talking together in the jail and Maria tells Herman “...I’m going to build a house for us, as you would have done.” Through the dialogue we understand most clearly, though we have seen ex-

behind the bars of the cell. The camera is looking at their conversation from a distance, and with restricted visual access to the characters’ facial reactions because of the prison bars obfuscating our view. This formal decision to distance us from the action is parallel to Maria’s own

when in reality she’s simply fulfilling her own desires. He tells her, in close up, “There’s a Greek word for people you let work for you. Translated, it means literally, ‘footman’.” Maria responds, “I’m your ‘footman’?” then scoffs and goes on to say, “No, that’s not true. I’m

amples of it already, that Maria is going to adopt the behaviour, goals and commitments traditionally attributed to men. She is the breadwinner and her desire for and success at achieving economic independence marks her as unorthodox. This scene and the motivations it stirs in Maria Braun is a prime example of how this female character subverts expectations of women at this time and redefines womanhood for herself. What is also interesting about this scene is that it opens with a shot from

choices to keep the people in her life at a distance. The set up of this shot reminds us of Maria’s coldness and emotional distance - or rather of her strict pragmatism, a trait that subverts female stereotypes in films and in life. Only after the line, “as you would have done for us” does Fassbinder decide to cut inside the cell and let us view the characters without the additional obstacle of the iron bars.

In this scene Hermann wants to believe that Maria is only doing these things for him

not your feet. Just say I’m your wife.” This could be interpreted as her dismissing him acting as if she works for him but alternatively it could be simply her saying (with pride) yes, I am yours and I am committed to you and to building a life for us.

Regardless of which interpretation rings true for you it is clear from this scene that Maria dictates the terms and establishes her own sets of rules. This scene ends when the prison guard says, “Your time is up,” to which Maria responds “on the contrary…”

The camera then cuts to a close up of her face and she finishes the line, “...my time’s just beginning.” This is the closing line of the scene and Maria makes sure that gets the last word. Fassbinder is telling us that Maria is the sole authority on her own life and the only person in con-

people operate (due in large part no doubt to the fact that he has likely never been exploited, sexualised or manipulated at work because of his gender). This husband and wife are shown to have contrasting outlooks on life and balances of power. Upon Maria telling him that she ini-

to everyone around her.” Maria may be cold and calculating but that’s a small price to pay for control over her life. To this Maria calmly replies, Maria says, “I don’t know how other people are. It’s not a good time for feelings. But that suits me. That way nothing really affects me.”

trol of her choices. We understand from this line that she is not only a strong, independent woman but that she has no intention of slowing down and she is only going to continue to put herself first and to thrive in her own way.

In a later scene tensions in the differing perspectives between Maria and Hermann’s views help elucidate how Maria does not conform to societal expectations for women. Hermann is exposed to have a very idealistic and romantic view of how

tiated an affair with Oswald because he is her employer and she wanted to maintain the upper hand in the relationship he asks, “Is that how things are between people on the outside now? So cold?” Hermann is evidently upset by Maria’s coldness, as we the audience may be, but that simply further communicates his ignorance about her experiences as a woman. In the article on The Marriage of Maria Braun on “Classic Art Films” we are also told, “during most of the film Maria is cold, distant and cruel

Here we understand that she is not emotional. She prefers excluding “feelings” from her dayto-day encounters with people and whether that means she is emotionally repressed or cruel is really beside the point because ultimately she stands on her own two feet and excels against the odds. I don’t believe Fassbinder is judging women (or anyone) for being emotional nor do I believe he is placing Maria’s cold emotional distance from people on a pedestal and saying ‘look, behave like this person’ either, 25

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but rather he is acknowledging that sometimes this kind of pragmatic outlook is a powerful method of self-protection and a necessary set of behaviour for women to adopt - particularly women living in Germany at this time. The character of Maria represents a rare opportunity for women on screen to be strong, self-sufficient and charismatic.

She is the perfect example of how women in films of the New German Cinema subvert expectations of female characters on screen and in doing so work to remind us of the need for more holistic representations of modern women. She is a powerful testament to the potential for cinema to present us with images of dynamic and unconventional women. It is refreshing to see that many women in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his contemporaries are shown seeking and securing financial and bodily autonomy in a world that is working against them.

In Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject, Thomas Elsaesser discusses how The Marriage of Maria Braun is Fassbinder’s “most ‘classically’ structured films” and how it is also subversive and demands a “variety of interpretations and responses” from its viewers. We are told, “Maria Braun offers an audience enough generic familiarity to encourage direct identification with the heroine’s ambitions, goals and disappointments.” I believe what Elsaesser is saying here is that Maria as a character 26

is likeable and familiar enough as a heroine to allow the audience to align with her and sympathise with her motives despite potential points of alienation. I think he’s communicating that it is a relief that Fassbinder does so because if Maria were not generically familiar “enough” his au-

soldier Bill (it is ambiguous in the film whether she had a miscarriage or procured an abortion). Elsaesser also talks about how Maria Braun’s fate “symbolize[s] that of many women, not only in Germany, for whom the war and the immediate postwar period had brought the kind

dience may have trouble understanding and liking her for her more transgressive behaviour i.e. conducting multiple affairs, refusing men who love her, denying anyone access to her emotional vulnerability, potentially aborting the mixed race child she conceived with the American

of freedom and emancipation which the men, returned from the war and once more reclaiming their patriarchal positions in public life, were busy taking away.” He speaks to the film as a kind of post-war feminist anthem, which I believe in many ways it is. Elsaesser tells us, “For

American audiences, Maria Braun became a German ‘Rosie the Riveter’, a popular icon in the late 1970s to encourage women to insist on their place in politics, public life and the professions” and I believe she serves a similar purpose even today for 21st Century viewers. Maria is so

ria Braun’s character serving as a symbol for post-war Germany, as “an ambiguous historical signifier,” so I will not attempt to further develop those logics or theories. Instead I will conclude commending Fassbinder and asserting that Maria’s subversive and progressive behaviour

sented as active participants in the professional world as well as agents of desire in their personal lives. They are often presented in opposition to traditional norms for women in the world and females on screen and I believe a considerable reason for this change in female presentation in the history of world cinema at this time was due to the political and cultural shifts in the landscape of the European film industry. I think the title character of The Marriage of Maria Braun represents an alternative to stereotypical tropes for women on screen. Maria challenge her male counterparts, the authority of the state and our assumptions as viewers to help us conceptualise a more inclusive society where women’s desires and aspirations are not only taken seriously but put first. ____ Sources Benjamin, Jessica. “The Bonds of Love : Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination” (1st ed.).

New York, Pantheon Books. 1988.

far from a passive character on screen; rather she is the guiding force of the film’s narrative and its title character. Her commitment to a union that appears insubstantial to a viewer is strange, pathetic and a testament to her strong will. There have been many words written about Ma-

and aspirations may mark her as cold and unfeeling but also as assertive and self-sufficient. In my opinion, Maria Braun offers a sense of hope to women who don’t wish to conform to societal norms.

In films of the New German Cinema women are pre-

Matthew. “Marriage of Maria Braun, The (1979).” Classic Art Films. July 31, 2015. Accessed May 24, 2018.

Elsaesser, Thomas. “The BRD Trilogy, Or: History, the Love Story? The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola and Veronika Voss.”

In Fassbinder’s Germany: History, Identity, Subject, 97-128. Amsterdam University Press, 1996.

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cult noir:

explaining the rising u.s. golden age of tv Kalee Kennedy

I

n the United States, there has been a rise in popularity for television narratives that explore the dark aspects of the human condition. As the television viewing populace grows, “dark” television has transitioned from having only a cult following to a mainstream acceptance. Addressing the conditions in which these shows are made and what they mean for the growing global television landscape expands the concept of dark television from that of an American fascination to an intrigue amassed on a global scale. In Scandinavia, this rise of dark television from the late 1990s onwards comes as no surprise. The Scandina-

28

vian countries have a rich tradition and transnational success in noir and crime fiction which befuddled historians given their small population sizes and public image as the happiest countries on Earth. With comparing American “dark” television’s significance, history, and aesthetics with the Scandinavian noir shows that have cultivated European noir and so on to America, film and television critics credit programs of Scandinavia to the rise of the Third Golden Age of Television.

In actuality, Scandinavian noir followed the American cult programs’ traditions of previous Golden Ages of Television.

Presently, the Americans are executing a return to the basics and a nod to programs that were ahead of their time in previous decades. In essence, contemporary American dark television is an update of the American cult programs of the past.

America’s Third Golden Age of Television arose from the “confluence of business, technological, and artistic currents”.

The transition from the advertiser dictating the content played for the masses are no longer of influence as these programs found their grounding and traction on cable networks like HBO and Showtime. Dark television involves cinematic aesthetics and

a focus on taboo topics of society from which early television shies away. Dark television serves to entice the eye and punch the stomach of the viewer by forcing the audience to contend with the elements of the human condition. Critics have remarked that the late 1990s saw a wave of hourlong dramas which scrapped the “rules of Traditional TV by introducing complicated characters and raising the quality – in terms of production writing, and visuals – to a cinematic level.” This cinematic level relates to Andre Bazin’s theory that a film director brings a film to life before the audience. Characters assume the same complexity and deep character development usually reserved for literature, and narratives assume intricate structures that match both feature length films and literature.

In the 1980s, the American series Hill Street Blues paved the way for the ‘quality audience.’ Its realistic style, nuanced characters, and plural and opened ended narratives changed the status quo for normative television storytelling. It also introduced the aforementioned auteur film theory to the small screen. The following were implemented

to increase quality and reach a high brow audience through the television medium: complex, naturalistic and nuanced story lines, narrative tailored to the specific potentials of television, the use of scriptwriters from Hollywood, and a shift to target programming rather than catering to the mainstream. High production values led to high ambitions, a redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial narration, operational aesthetics (calling attention to the construction of the story by the use of storytelling devices) and the formation of a new type of fans (forensic fandom).

The world of noir explores elements of darkness psychologically, morally, and cinematographically. Film noir is a genre that produces self-reflection on the part of the viewer, and this self-questioning intellectualism became an important part of the genre. The genre’s elements emphasize “contingency and chance, a world where there are no values or moral absolutes, and which is devoid of meaning except those that are self-created by the alienated and confused ‘non-heroic hero’.”.

Elements of film noir such as

moral ambivalence, criminality, and complex contradictions in character motives and events allow the viewer to experience the characters’ anguish and insecurity. With its modernist sensibility, film noir elevated the critical component in popular cinema.

Scandinavian noir refers to the crime fiction revolution initialized by writers Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson.

Scandinavian noir predicates itself on its “highly localized focus on unknown spaces” and its accessibility through an international market. Generally, Scandinavian features focus on the landscape, melancholic storylines, complex female characters, unrestrained sexual expression, and realistic filmmaking practices. These elements have contributed to Denmark and Sweden’s extended success on the small and big screens.

The past decade of Danish television drama has signaled a revolution for the discipline.

The small country of Denmark is enjoying its golden era, but with just 2.5 million households tuning in, Danish’s television market is recognized as one of the smallest in Europe. The Danish Radio (DR), the coun-

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Hill Street Blues

Scandinavian Noir

Dark

Twin Peaks

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The Killing

Mindhunter

try’s broadcasting company, also helped the television revolution by prioritizing “relevant appealing narratives over effect-driven sensation.” DR implemented several aspects from their film practice to bring their television shows to prominence.

They advocated for the concept of the ‘one vision’ by allowing the writer to set the focus in the early stages of development and during the entire production process. This helped to generate coherent, intricate plots and complex characters, interlocking narrative strands and layers based on different protagonists, and motifs or settings which di-

verge or coincide, adding intelligent composition to the evolving plots. The crime may not be relevant itself, but the moral, political, and social problems are, and the audience is left to consider them long after the episode ends.

Danish television finds influence in other countries, and its narratives reflect a knowledge of other nations’ film and television histories. Danish shows exhibit “transparent narratives” that are easily translatable to other countries. Certain texts appear in the programs regardless of their foreign origin. Danish drama “combines Scandinavian exot-

icism with American-inspired models of storytelling to explore themes that resonate with a public service broadcasting ethos.”

Danish television drama consciously uses Hollywood narrative and aesthetic templates (often those of David Lynch), but its point of departure is its regality and ‘Europeanness.’

The bulk of Nordic and Scandinavian noir derive their visual representations from American television dramas of the past like Hill Street Blues.

Kristoffer Nyholm’s The Killing became an international hit overnight and sparked a cultural phenomenon. The Danish 31

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production follows the female protagonist, Sarah Lund, face challenges as a crime detective.

The show’s careful writing challenges crime drama stereotypes.

The creators trust their viewers will keep up with the twists, layering, and confrontation with US taboo subjects. The program showcased the benefits of targeted marketing in television and how the homogeneity of the Danes leads to a targeted audience developing into the mainstream.

International taste for Scandinavian television was piqued by The Killing, and the debut of The Bridge brought the same results. The Swedish and Danish coproduction acquired a dedicated cult following. The concept consists of the murder of two persons and their mutilated body parts are placed by the murderer on Oresund bridge; the bridge connects Sweden and Denmark together. The show highlights the term transnationalism, which is a way more humble, and often a more adequate label for phenomena which can be of quite variable scale and distribution, even when they do share the characteristic of not being contained within a state. It also makes the point that many of the linkages in question are not ‘international,’ in the strict sense of involving nations – actually states – as corporate actors. In the transnational arena, the actors may be individuals, groups, movements enterprises, and in no small part it is this 32

diversity of organization that we need to consider.

The show offers differing cultural significances between the two countries, and showcases the anxieties and difficulties that come through working with a neighboring nation. The transparent narrative of the program resided in the fact that neighboring countries have the same conflicting relationship. The program also has many storylines at play besides the ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery, for these aspects The Bridge shines. While both of these programs are fascinating to Americans and Brits for their visualizations, parts of the visual language are borrowed from the American director and writer David Lynch.

The earliest indication of the wave of dark television in the United States came from David Lynch’s iteration of Twin Peaks in 1990. The show ran for two seasons and culminated in 1992 with a theatrical film entitled Fire Walk With Me. The rise of dark television in recent years saw the revival and continuation of the show in late 2017. Today, Twin Peaks has been recognized for being a watershed moment, but cannot shake its

cult status as classified by Umberto Echo in the article “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage”. Eco expresses that on the surface level, a cult object “must provide a completely furnished world, so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were part of the beliefs of a sect, a private world of their own, a world about which one can play puzzle games and trivia contests, and whose adepts recognize each other through a common competence”. Two other aspects that contribute to the development of a cult object are “living textuality” and “strong authorship.” Lynch’s style is visible without a doubt; his use of slow dissolves, spotlighting, extreme close-ups, figures who emerge out of darkness, and exaggerated noise are aspects that make a Lynch project, Lynch.

Scandinavian television borrows the signatures of Lynch style to convey the moods of Scandinavian cinema on the

small screen. Another key aspect in the development of a cult object is the ability for the object to express detachability. Lynch creates a distance from the viewer to allow for self-reflection.

Although created by Joe Penhall, the Netflix-distributed Mindhunter feels David Lynch’s influence. Similar to The Bridge, the show inhabits a serial episodic form with multiple storylines.

The visual language of the show conveys more than the narrative and sets the viewer on edge.

Mindhunter uses color, framing, and the absence of the visual to put responsibility on the viewer to construct their own visualizations of the murder fantasies that have actually been committed by the inmates featured. The color juxtaposition of muted neutrals with abrasive brights calls attention to certain spots of the frame. The framing of the characters and objects alludes to the absence and the focus on the void. Scandinavian media uses this technique when capturing scenes in the vast landscape of the northern countries, thereby highlighting the ephemerality of life and the destruction of morality. These Scandinavian and American noir techniques do not combat each other, but rather work together to create higher quality programming for the global audience. Countries have observed the marriage of the two aesthetics and have adopted and implemented them into their own national programming hoping to attain the same global

success.

The Netflix series Dark demonstrates a connection of Scandinavian noir to a broader European context. Debuted in December 2017, the German language series differs from these Scandinavian shows as it leans more towards science fiction than to horror or crime.

Dark involves a mystery-filled, thrilling, multi-layered storyline that seems particularly German but also Scandinavian.

The show’s cinematic qualities shine through as a compelling factor for the huge American viewership. Per its location, Germany’s television landscape is pressured to compete with the Scandinavian countries’ flourishing television market. Many content creators are encouraged to participate in international co-productions and appeal to a greater foreign audience. The show’s Scandinavian qualities come from its characters; “Dark’s characters aren’t nearly as quirky and oddball as David Lynch’s – they’re more like the dour, desperate stars of a Scandinavian TV series, slowly drinking themselves to death and seeking whatever pleasures they can to compensate for the lack of light and hope in the world.”

With the flourishing of the Third US Golden Age of Television, many critics are quick to attribute the revolution to the successful international exports that hail from Scandinavian countries. These successful exports have distinctive moods

and particular qualities which many attribute to Scandinoir.

Although new American shows are similar to Danish crime shows, it is misleading to say that this is all due to Scandinavia; on the contrary, the bulk of Scandinavian television utilizes American film noir techniques to produce their transnational successes. ____ Sources Akande, Zainab. “Why We Have Film Noir to Thank For ‘Twin Peaks’ and Other Hit TV Dramas.” IndieWire, IndieWire, 27 Dec. 2014.

Forshaw, Barry. Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film & TV. Pocket Essentials, 2013.

Hochscherf, Tobias, and Heidi Philipsen. Beyond the Bridge: Contemporary Danish Television Drama. I.B. Tauris, 2017.

Lavery, David. Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Wayne State Univ. Press, 2009.

Mast, Gerald, and Bruce F. Kawin. A Short History of the Movies. Longman, 2011.

McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. I.B. Tauris, 2011.

Reese, Hope. “Why Is the Golden Age of TV So Dark?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 11 July 2013.

Robinson, Tasha. “Netflix’s Dark Is Hard to Watch, and Impossible to Stop Watching.” The Verge, The Verge, 1 Dec. 2017, Rogers, Thomas. “With ‘Dark,’ a German Netflix Series, Streaming Crosses a New Border.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Nov. 2017.

Rolls, Alistair. “Editor’s Letter: The Undecidable Lightness of Writing Crime.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 3, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp.

3–8.

Spicer, A. (2002). Film Noir. London: Routledge.

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experimental cinema in paris: a conversation with diana vidrascu on viewing & distribution © Kodak

W

ith the growing popularity of online streaming as the go-to means of visual media consumption, one wonders about the future of film. Will movie theaters even exist in 40-60 years? I personally think they will, and seeing big box office turnouts for recent mainstream releases such as Black Panther, Incredibles 2, and Crazy Rich Asians makes me think that American audiences still enjoy going to the movies and experiencing the sensation of the silver screen. Yet the debate regarding film’s survival not only relies on the quality of the productions themselves, but also on the role of film distribution and the way people view these films. I’m particularly interested in how this comes into play with the distribution of experimental film – a type of film that isn’t typically distributed within the conven34

Samuel Leter

tions of mainstream media.

Born and raised in Paris, I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy the various movie theatres and cinema institutions available around the city at affordable student prices. France is a particular case in matters of film production and distribution, as these are primarily funded through government subventions by the CNC (Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée), a subsidiary of the French Ministry of Culture that supports French film productions in regards to national financing, distribution, and archiving. The CNC also provides assistance for movie theatres, DVD labels, film festivals, and all kinds of other audiovisual initiatives. Whereas Hollywood and indie filmmaking in the U.S. use private sources of funding, many French filmmakers benefit from this support of

the state.

In the discussion around the survival and future of film and film viewing, perhaps this French model of government subvention and institutional support offers a valuable, long-lasting solution. This is especially the case with regards to experimental film in France, where many French institutions have maintained a dynamic scene of experimental film, especially in Paris. Some to note are the cooperatives such as Collectif Jeune Cinéma and Light Cone, the labs such as l’Abominable and l’Etna, or other programming venues such as Braquage.

The Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema), which is also supported by the CNC and celebrated its 20th edition this Fall, has certainly been another import-

ant meeting point for the experimental film community there.

Further, the Cinémathèque Française, one of the world’s most important film institutions for archival and screening material, includes “avant-garde nights” in their seasonal programs to promote experimental filmmakers, primarily thanks to the influence of academic Nicole Brenez.

With all these different establishments put into place, it is hard to imagine an eradication of film and experimental film’s existence in the near future. In this regard, the distribution label Re:Voir Video (“re:watch” in French) has been as equally important in its role of supporting experimental film in Paris.

Founded by Pip Chodorov in 1998, it has released works of filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Philippe Garrel, Boris Lehman, and Stan Brakhage. Re:Voir is one of the most important distribution labels of experimental film worldwide, with an extensive handpicked collection of classic and contemporary experimental cinema.

Re:Voir first started off with the distribution of VHS cassettes, later transitioning to DVDs, and recently turning to the addition of an online VOD platform. Its physical store, based in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, is now the only place within the city to sell 8mm and 16mm film stocks over the counter, in addition to a large variety of Bolex cameras and other analog equipment

and accessories, books on experimental cinema, and even experimental music. They are fierce supporters of analog film, as proven by the filmic methods used in the films they distribute.

Last summer I had the opportunity to speak with Diana Vidrascu, a Romanian cinematographer in charge of production at Re:Voir, on her thoughts regarding the viewing and distribution of experimental film.

will still look and sound great.

It’s true that we recently started releasing Blu-Rays so that we step closer to what film images should feel like. The DVD is a low-resolution medium that will never suffice in image quality on modern TV screens. But Blu-Ray comes pretty close to it. Blu-Ray will obviously never compete with a DCP (Digital Cinema Package), but a DCP will never come close to a film screening either.

____

Sam: Do you think DVDs are an adequate form of viewing film, and specifically experimental film, which deals so much with texture and form?

Diana: There is an ongoing debate on how DVD or home video in general shouldn’t be a replacement of the movie-going experience. And it’s all the more relevant if it’s experimental film and artist moving-images shot on film. But then, objectively speaking, the DVDs shouldn’t be considered a carbon copy of the film - there will always be aspects that will differ. However, I would come in the defense of the compression techniques available today, in addition to the better quality film scans and digitizations. It’s really not the same software algorithm one had access to in 2001, when we started releasing DVDs at Re:Voir. You can now watch frame-by-frame animation films, which are the most difficult to encode, and it

SL: When interning at Re:Voir this summer, I noticed that it was more than just a store with DVDs, that there was a whole deeper social dimension to the space. It embodied a meeting point for experimental film enthusiasts to engage in social interactions, where the whole physicality of digging through the racks, holding a DVD and discussing it became a form of material but also social exchange. Is maintaining the existence of DVDs a key priority for you at Re:Voir, or is the goal rather to make experimental film as widely accessible as possible regardless of the viewing medium?

DV: I think it’s going to be a good compromise of all these points you mentioned. People that buy experimental film are very interested in the material quality of it. Maybe because experimental film has a certain philosophy of “materiality”, in the making of the film, in the process of creating cinema. So the DVD or the Blu-Ray becomes an object in itself. Even though we don’t often release limited series, our titles are always more or less col35

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lectors’ titles. And they have a certain value, not just because it allows you to experience a rare film, but also because you can read critical texts and have access to bonus features in our accompanying booklets. Moreover, the design is reflective of the author’s wishes; titles run within a collection so you can also feel the intentions of a programming series. We’re trying to have a certain continuity in our catalogue, so you can choose more than just one DVD at a time and see how they become part of a certain dialogue between eras, schools of thought, artist groups, film mediums, etc.

But evidently, our purpose isn’t solely to make titles available in the best quality, but also to a wider audience. In that respect I still feel like DVDs are widely circulated: statistically more people would buy a DVD over a Blu-Ray. It’s not just price, it’s because this public will tend to have more often DVD players in their homes (or institutions) than Blu-Ray players. Which is obviously sad because we would like to push people to acquire Blu-Rays, to be able to see Stan Brakhage films for example, in their best quality restoration.

VOD is something we started in 2014 when we realized that we wanted to be ahead of the game and keep on top of a distribution market that is constantly evolving. We realized then the demands of a new emerging public; students or young artists that will start learning about 36

experimental film, won’t even have a DVD player by the time they’ll become curious to see the masterworks of Stan Brakhage or Jonas Mekas, or contemporary moving-image artists. So we had to push for VOD, and in that sense we had to gain market territory where there hadn’t been a clear interest prior. And I would say VOD is also part of a strategy in trying to acquire better quality scans, or better copies of the films to be digitized, because, unlike DVDs we can always stream very high quality video. And by watching it online, the production and the sale price lowers automatically and makes it more accessible to the international public.

Through VOD we actually got access to an unforeseen Asian market, one that’s more interested in watching films dematerialized. Nevertheless, the American market is definitely still number one of our VOD sales. We are also collaborating with numerous VOD platforms, both American and European, and we can see that there’s a worldwide growing interest for showing experimental films on VOD. But what we’ve noticed at the same time, is that DVD sales have not decreased but went on at a steady pace. There hasn’t been a competition in between the two markets. The DVD sales in this niche experimental film market have more or less been steady for the past five years, if not even showing a slight increase.

SL: Do you see an explanation for that?

DV: I would go back to that idea of the object as a collector’s item, that people are buying it because they want to have it on their shelf, part of their film collection, as they would want to own a paperback book instead of an eBook. I remember a very funny conversation I recently had with an experimental filmmaker who loved a French short film from the 60s, and had heard we put it out as a bonus on one of our DVDs. He wanted to watch it since he hadn’t seen it in twenty years, to which I said “I could just send you a link, we have it on Vimeo”, but he replied, “Yeah I know, but could you give me the DVD, I’d rather own it.”

And actually that’s what drives us forward as a video label, it’s the people that want to have it.

SL: What’s your ideal viewing experience?

DV: I went through a formation as director of photography, so whatever the film might be or the purpose of the experience might be, I still prefer to watch it on the big screen, on a proper cinema screen. And I always want to watch a good copy. I’m not particularly keen on watching a film projection at all costs, I would rather watch a very good scan that’s been graded and looks amazing in a DCP projection than to watch a 16mm

copy, scratched and faded, that someone found sitting in a random archive. And that’s probably going to contradict with 95% of the experimental filmmaker community around me, especially in Paris. But I will defend that viewpoint because I strongly believe we should invest more in restoration and preservation, and that is more often done by digitizing, than striking new film copies. I think it’s important to maintain the preservation knowledge, because releasing new DCPs and facilitating new restorations is making people aware that film, if not cared for, can become extinct as a medium.

Since experimental filmmaking has always been made on a shoestring budget, people weren’t always aware of the care needed to preserve a film original. I’ve witnessed one too many tragedies of artists having lost their works, so in that respect I will defend whatever makes people aware of the archiving necessities. Hence, my ideal screening experience would be that: a well-restored copy, graded by their author or following their notes, and in perfect knowledge of the original filmmaking process. But then again, sometimes, I would also say that it might just as well be any “viewing experience”, as long as there is one at all. If we’re talking about a film work so incredibly rare, as it is often the case with artist moving-image film, I will feel privileged if I can experience it in any form.

© Collectif Jeune Cinéma

15

intercut

SL: I remember talking to Jaap Pieters (a Dutch filmmaker who recently screened some of his 8mm films at Re:Voir) this summer and he stated that: “I never watch DVDs. I only watch films if they’re screened.” And I guess I can understand this desire for the so-called ‘authentic’ cinema viewing experience, but also felt like that might be missing out on other meaningful viewings. What are your thoughts on this type of attachment to analog projection?

DV: I think it’s very specific to this filmmaking community, and to people like Jaap Pieters or to other artists who are in Re:Voir’s catalogue. Because film has been part of their practice and it’s also at the core of their artistic discourse. It’s what drives them to make films and they will defend it at all costs. I went to a film school where to pass the admission test I had to prepare for two years by watching cinema smuggled off Pirate Bay on my lousy computer screen. And it was by no means correct to judge the visuals of those films or learn the subtlety of cinematography from it – but at that time it was the only way to watch these works. Sometimes a film that I’ll watch now on VOD, that I had never seen before or will maybe never have the chance to see it distributed, might also move me to tears on my TV screen at home. But I think that’s part of my generation’s philosophy: the hunger for film culture in any form and at any given moment.

Parisians are fortunately very spoiled. They can just walk to a beautiful theatre that will screen 38

rare films on Rue des Écoles or at the Cinémathèque Française and watch them in the best conditions! Unfortunately, that’s not the case for all audiences; Paris is a unique case for cinema goers. ____ Perhaps Paris is a very singular case for cinema audiences, and perhaps there are only a few remaining “cinema capitals” in the world - like New York, Hong Kong, or Berlin - where one could experience film viewings in particularly nurtured spaces (and not just AMC theatres). I would agree with Diana that, although watching a movie in a cinema is ultimately a better viewing experience, any viewing experience at all is better than none. It is truly incredible that such a massive quantity of films can be viewed online via a simple laptop. Yet I can’t help but think that this individualizes the viewing process, and makes it less of a shared experience. The act of projecting a film in a movie theater or any other public space, draws onto an inherently social manifestation in which interactions can occur among large crowds and audiences. If there are no more cinema projections, there will be no more in-person film festivals, and thus a certain loss of direct communication between the filmmaker and spectator. If there are no DVD stores, this might also diminish the sense of community sharing and dialogue around the appreciation

of film as a physical format, and the desire to possess it, almost as an artifact or ‘experience’ in itself. Ultimately, there will be no physical spaces of social interactions around the viewing experience and appreciation – only the consumption of the viewing will exist. But in a modern day where these physical spaces are no longer required to ensure interaction and virtual communication, I wonder if film viewing will actually open up to a more accessible, democratic, and interactive experience, outside the realms of the movie theatre or projected space.

© Re:Voir Vidéo