Article:

The politics of spatiality in experimental nonfiction cinema: Jonathan Perel’s TOPONIMIA

This article maps out the presence of a spatio-political tendency within a diverse corpus of experimental nonfiction films. Within such works urban/rural landscapes and spaces – typically presented through protracted, deep focus shots – become the central and structuring foci through which to deploy critiques of authoritarian state governance, global capitalism, and neoliberalist political hegemony. Using Argentinian filmmaker Jonathan Perel’s film TOPONIMIA (2015) as a case study, this article examines some of the political and aesthetic potentialities for this mode of film practice.