ON THE FILMS OF LUCRECIA MARTEL: May 2011

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SMITH ON MARTEL

Martel used shallow depth-of-field, or compression, in her previous films to bring her central characters, members of Argentina’s bourgeoisie, into relief against their surroundings and the huddled bodies that crowded around them. In The Headless Woman, her use of compression is even more purposeful. It illustrates [the main character's] “separation from reality” [...]. The plane of focus remains on her because that separation is part of the subject of the film.

Michael S. Smith, 'Lucrecia Martel's Immersive Cinema', Filmwell, July 31, 2009

PAGE ON MARTEL

"How can we locate the political in relation to [Martel's] films? While [La ciénaga/The Swamp and La niña santa/The Holy Girl] are too unstable to be read as allegories, they do demonstrate a self-reflexive concern with questions of perception, meaning and interpretation, which […] address precisely the anxiety coming from critical readings".

"Both reflexivity and minimalism in Martel's work can be read as aesthetic responses to the same phenomenon, a folding-in of structures of signification associated with the merging of public and private spheres and the erosion of a distinct space for meaningful political action."

Joanna Page, Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 186-7 and 193

SOSA ON MARTEL

[La mujer sin cabeza/The Headless Woman] offers a frightening mirror in response to the guilt that flows from one time to another, embracing successive generations. In doing so, the film invites viewers to consider the distortions of their eyes, and eventually to re-make reality. Of course, [it] also offers the option of responding through refusal and denial. But the film sets its own conditions: in its context silence means complicity and ultimately to remain captured in the old machinery of guilt."

Cecilia Sosa, “A Counter-narrative of Argentine Mourning: The Headless Woman (2008), directed by Lucrecia Martel”, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 26, Nos. 7-8 (2009)

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Announcing a Symposium on the Films of Lucrecia Martel

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