Recent Experimental Cinema 2: Grenier, Vaz (x2) (Patreon)

Wishbone (Vincent Grenier, 2021)

Like Jodie Mack's Wasteland No. 3, Grenier's latest film is slated to have its world premiere during MoMA's "To the Lighthouse" program, featuring films selected by Mark McElhatten. Wishbone, Grenier's new film, is just over one minute long, and according to its maker, it was something he created during the Covid lockdown. This makes sense, given that Wishbone is primarily about collapsing the distinction between inside and outside, with particular focus on the thin glass membranes (windows, windshields) that we use to mark that divide.

The basis of Wishbone is a still life on a tabletop near a window. In addition to a small figurine of a Buddha-like weightlifter, and a nondescript glass prism, the composition is anchored by the titular wishbone. It is situated inside two different drinking glasses, its branches contained as it tapers into a juncture that hovers between both containers. But this still life doesn't remain still for long. Grenier overlays the tabletop with a flowing river, complete with a rower in a tiny kayak. (Admittedly, this micro-figure reminded me of the old Ty-D-Bol commercials, with the little man paddling through the toilet.)

The second half of Wishbone is mostly superimposed on this first part, and it is comprised of footage shot from a car, as someone is driving through a forest road. Grenier's fractured superimposition makes it difficult to discern what is actually seen outside the windshield, versus what is merely reflected upon it. These are the sort of visual ambiguities that have long been a favored subject in Grenier's work (cf. 2011's Armoire or the more recent Commute from 2018), but of course they reflect a new level of anxiety in the wake of the pandemic. In its brevity, Wishbone is a bit like a commercial for the new normal, the simultaneous presence of our previous lives and its inaccessibility.

Pseudosphinx (Ana Vaz, 2020)

This is one of two recent films by Vaz that I saw courtesy of the Open City Documentary Festival. Many of the films that brought wider attention to Vaz in the experimental film community, such as Here is Land! and Apiyemiyekî?, addressed topics specific to the history of colonialism in Brazil, but with these two new films she is taking a somewhat different tack. Pseudosphinx, from last year, uses the life cycle of a particular butterfly as a touchstone for the exploration of superstition, particularly as it relates to the misunderstanding of both women and the animal kingdom. 

"Pseudosphinx" is the name of a creature known as the fire-caterpillar, and the term derives from the conviction in the Middle Ages that witches were able to transform themselves into butterflies to elude detection. The actual metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies was not only used as a metaphor for the patriarchal fear of women's folk knowledge. That fear was read back onto the specimen itself, aligning it with the dark arts. Formally, Pseudosphinx is quite a bit different from Vaz's other films. In addition to the extended shots of fat caterpillars affixed to leaves (a bit of natural observation that recalls some of Ben Rivers' recent films), there are kaleidoscopic animations, at once suggesting metamorphosis and camouflage. There is a vaguely Victorian element to these collage sequences, which itself reflects Vaz's concern with science (or pseudo-science) becoming an ideological template for human relations.

13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Vera Amaral, Mário Neto, and Ana Vaz, 2021)

An even more dramatic departure than Pseudosphinx, Vaz's most recent film is the end product of a film workshop that the artist conducted with high school students in Portugal. Co-directed with two of those students, 13 Ways uses the titular poem by Wallace Stevens as its overarching structure. This is a productive decision, since Stevens' poem is primarily about subjective perception, particularly the evolution of our impressions across time. Divided like the poem into thirteen segments, 13 Ways does not develop in the conventional sense, and its disjointedness can be confusing at first.

While Vaz and company seem to have adopted the Stevens poem because of its focus on change within a constant frame, there is also a sense that the decision might have been arbitrary. The film is a sort of fragmented documentation of its own making, wherein the students consider aesthetic matters, such as the application of film theory or the connections between representation and reality. But they also use individual segments to explore the fundamental materials of cinema: sound, framing, camera movement, etc.

In the best possible way, 13 Ways is a pedagogical film. It offers glimpses of a real-time learning process, with the students using the medium not just to gain technical know-how but to establish their own philosophical relationship to cinema. I don't know if Vaz had thirteen students in her charge, but the resulting film is a multifaceted consideration of art as a process of discovery and adventure.