2015/1 – #Animals
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- ReviewMcMansion of media excess: Ryan Trecartin’s and Lizzie Fitch’s SITE VISITÅkervall, Lisa (2015) , S. 279-286
- ArticleIn search of Godard’s SAUVE LA VIE (QUI PEUT)Witt, Michael (2015) , S. 3-26This article examines a little-known compilation film titled Sauve la vie (qui peut) that Jean-Luc Godard created in 1981 within the framework of a series of lectures on cinema history that he delivered in Rotterdam in 1980-1981. To make this compilation film he combined sections from his Sauve qui peut (la vie) with extracts from four other films. Based on archival research, the article considers the context for the screening, the film’s structure, Godard’s wider engagement with the filmmakers whose work he incorporated, the prints he used, my attempts to reconstruct the film, and its reception in 1981 and today.
- ReviewToo much world: A Hito Steyerl retrospectiveAlbuquerque, Paula (2015) , S. 269-278
- ArticleFilm studies in the groove? Rhythmising perception in Carnal LocomotiveGrant, Catherine (2015) , S. 85-90
- ReviewReaching out!: Activating space in the art of Olafur EliassonEriksson, Olivia (2015) , S. 287-293
- ReviewTelevision studies reloaded: From history to textScaglioni, Massimo (2015) , S. 209-214
- ArticleTasmanian tigers and polar bears: The documentary moving image and (species) lossSmaill, Belinda (2015) , S. 145-162In this essay I explore how two divergent examples of the nonfiction moving image can be understood in relation to the problem of representing species loss. The species that provide the platform for this consideration are the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, and the polar bear. They represent the two contingencies of species loss: endangerment and extinction. My analysis is structured around moving images from the 1930s of the last known thylacine and the very different example of ARCTIC TALE (Adam Ravetch, Sarah Robertson, 2007), a ‘Disneyfied’ film that dramatises climate change and its impact on the polar bear. Species loss is frequently perceived in a humanist sense, reflecting how we ‘imagine ourselves’ or anthropocentric charactersations of non-human others. I offer a close analysis of the two films, examining the problem of representing extinction through a consideration of the play of absence and presence, vitality and extinguishment, that characterises both the ontology of cinema and narratives about species loss.
- ReviewThe documentary film bookWahlberg, Malin (2015) , S. 215-219
- ArticleHorseplay: Equine performance and creaturely acts in cinemaHockenhull, Stella (2015) , S. 181-198Throughout Béla Tarr’s latest and reputedly final film THE TURIN HORSE (2011), the horse (Ricsi), as the title of the film indicates, leaves the spectator in no doubt that she is an important, if not the most important, individual within the narrative. However, unlike most films which feature animals as central protagonists, at no juncture is the horse’s behaviour articulated in human-driven semantics. Furthermore, she is never presented with what Emmanuel Gouabault, Annik Dubied, and Claudine Burton-Jeangros describe as a superindividual status. This stated, neither does the director devalue the role of the animal. Instead, Ricsi’s performance can be analysed in what Brenda Austin-Smith argues is ‘memorable film characterization’, whereby animal performance is valid and ‘counts for something’. While it cannot be suggested that Ricsi deliberately acts as a character her performance is equally valuable for analysis both within and outside the context of the narrative. Applying performance theory and film theory to a study of the role and performance of the horses in two films, THE TURIN HORSE and OF HORSES AND MEN (Benedikt Erlingsson 2013), this essay proposes an alternative and more fitting approach to the study of animals in film. The contention here is that neither film humanises or ‘starifies’ the horses, yet all of the equine presentations are significant, as well as examples of what Michael Kirby terms simple acting. This essay begins by examining the ways in which animal performance has predominantly been represented and discussed in media and film before proposing Kirby’s notion of simple acting as a mode of analysis.
- ArticleFeminist film studies 40 years after VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA, a triologueMulvey, Laura; Rogers, Anna Backman; van den Oever, Annie (2015) , S. 67-79Forty years after the publication of her seminal essay VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA in Screen, Laura Mulvey, together with Anna Backman Rogers, has edited Feminisms: Diversity, Difference, and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures, which is the latest instalment of The Key Debates series. NECSUS invited Laura Mulvey and Anna Backman Rogers to join Annie van den Oever, editor of NECSUS and series editor of The Key Debates, in a ‘triologue’, which in part reflects and re-emphasises the topics publicly discussed during the Feminisms symposia.
- ArticleWhen Lulu met the Centaur: Photographic traces of creaturely lovePettman, Dominic (2015) , S. 127-144The brief triangular love between Nietzche, Salomé, and Rée – as crystallised in the famous photograph of kitsch (literal) horse-play, where the woman is depicted as treating the two men as beasts of burden – allows us to consider the role of ‘creaturely love’ in our more general understanding of the lover’s discourse. That is to say, through such images we can explore the role and figure of the animal within ‘the anthropological machine’, itself designed to produce a sense of the human from the inhuman (especially through mediated forms of intimacy). Further, in the different intermedial relationships between photography, poetry, and philosophy, the Centaur – in the letters and texts circulated by this group (later including Rilke) – provides a charged specific totem for a libidinal ecology of souls, striving to understand themselves as simultaneously creaturely and spiritual. Such a figure allowed both a recognition and a disavowal of the nonhuman basis (and telos) of human affections.
- ArticleCinematic slowness, political paralysis? Animal life in BOVINES, with Deleuze and GuattariMcMahon, Laura (2015) , S. 163-180Deleuze elaborates accounts of cinematic time and of becoming-animal quite separately, without addressing potential links between these accounts. Drawing on a range of works by Deleuze and Guattari, this article allows these accounts to intersect through a reading of the aesthetics of slowness in the documentary art film Bovines ou la vraie vie des vaches (THE TRUE LIFE OF COWS, Emmanuel Gras, 2012) and its generative focus on (de)territorialisation, becoming, and affect. In privileging what Peter Hallward calls ‘virtual creatings’ over ‘actual creatures’, Bovines implicitly proposes a celebration of biovitality rather than an interrogation of biopolitics, pointing to the possible political limitations of the film and of the Deleuzo-Guattarian framework deployed here.
- ReviewDossier: International Film Festival Rotterdam 2015de Valck, Marijke; Baars, Fanny; Bower, Molly; Butt, Marina; Celeste, Aidan; Gialitis, Aleksas; Maciver, Frances; Schumacher, Anne; Suchá, Lenka; Vandergeerde, Sarah (2015) , S. 235-247
- ReviewEDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL OF DREAMS: Travelogues and early nonfiction filmFreeman, Adam Ludford (2015) , S. 227-233
- ArticleDancing in the sun: The musical as touristic hook in HONEYMOONMerás, Lidia; Wright, Sarah (2015) , S. 47-65The British/Spanish co-production HONEYMOON (LUNA DE MIEL, Michael Powell, 1959) is a curious case of an export for foreign audiences that won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival yet was a commercial failure. Taking this now forgotten film as a case study, we will investigate the musical genre from a transnational perspective. Recently restored to its original length, Honeymoon includes compositions by Manuel de Falla and Sarasate, as well as performances by ballet dancer Ludmilla Tchérina and Spanish dance star Antonio (Ruiz Soler), both choreographed by Léonide Massine. We examine the interplay between national and transnational elements in a musical that tries to emulate the success of THE RED SHOES (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948) by putting it in the context of the Spanish cultural and economic policies of promoting the country.
- ReviewDavid Reeb: Traces of Things to ComeTorchin, Leshu (2015) , S. 293-299
- ArticleAnimals, images, anthropocentrismCreed, Barbara; Reesink, Maarten (2015) , S. 95-105Anthropocentrism is central to the nature of discourse across all disciplines, from science to philosophy and the arts. We argue that anthropocentrism has become particularly marked in modernity despite the avowal by some theorists that modernity signified a radical break with traditional approaches. A powerful strategy, invoked by such discourses, and designed to cement the anthropocentric perspective, is that of contradiction. Media theorists and scholars working in the broader field of (human) animal studies have begun to unravel and demystify such discourses, questioning the nature of these contradictory perspectives and the anthropocentric point of view at work in visual texts. This is particularly evident in the current work of contemporary theorists who are researching the representation of animals in media texts. For it is the figure of the animal, as represented in visual discourses, from film to photography and new media, that offers a powerful challenge to the dominant anthropocentric worldview.
- ReviewDispatches from the dark: A conversation with Neil Young at the 2015 International Film Festival RotterdamSteinhart, Daniel (2015) , S. 248-254
- ArticleEditorial NecsusNECSUS Editorial Board (2015) , S. 1-2
- ArticleClub VideoBrophy, Philip (2015) , S. 91-92