Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays

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Issue 9 – 2022 (1)

In issue 9 of Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, the different authors tackle a very diverse set of topics: they take spectators to regrettably common places within the collective imaginary, such as the police raid, address the expression of coloniality via the aesthetic utilization of the long take, undertake an exploration of U.S. petro-masculinity, reflect on the perception of time in “slow cinema”, approach nationalism within contemporary South Korean blockbusters and, finally, study the use of voiceover narration from a gender perspective within the video essay format. Like in other issues, the featured works are extraordinarily miscellaneous. They are both in Spanish and English. 

 

Additionally, we are proud to showcase three works by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid students, made within the curricular trajectory of our degrees.

 

Lastly, in the section “From the Archive”, Luis Cemillán addresses a little-known episode within the impressive career of director Juan Antonio Bardem, precisely in 2022, the year in which we celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. 

 

We go on… Enjoy, please.

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Coloniality, the Backstage, and the Long Take

Márton Árva, Eötvös Loránd University – 04:30

This audiovisual essay analyzes the sensory expression of coloniality in a long take that follows the protagonist, a live-in domestic worker, in Anna Muylaert’s film The Second Mother (Que Horas Ela Volta?, 2015).

Keywords: coloniality; long take; domestic labor; politics of affect; Brazilian cinema

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Drill, baby, drill. Petro-masculinity in the United States cinema

Ariadna Cordal (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) – 04:30

Starting with the concept of petro-masculinity, this video essay traces the archaeology of the United States petroleum film, linking it with the Western genre to unravel how nature is represented.

Keywords: petro-masculinity, western, ecocriticism, United States cinema

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Police Force(s)

Edurne Larumbe Villarreal (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) & Abraham Roberto Cea Núñez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) – 04:30

This video-essay approaches a certain iconography of the police raid, reviewing its cinematographic, TV, and journalistic images to compare them with those taken in the streets through the smartphone. It is through a type of “disciplinary gesture” that bodies become one: police institution as State machinery.

Keywords: police raid, iconography, discipline, gesture, Foucault

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Temporal Ghosts | David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story”

Enrique Saunders – 04:30

This audiovisual essay researches the effects of slow cinema on the viewer in A Ghost Story (2017). It intends to provoke reflection on the perception of time during long takes.

Keywords: slow cinema, long take, A Ghost Story, temporality, realism

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With the Voice Present: “Imperfect” Video-Essays during Quarantine

Michelle Leigh Farrell (Fairfield University) – 04:30

This audiovisual essay deals with the use of voice-over in terms of gender beyond an English-language focus within the video-essay genre. I argue that the audiovisual essay  in Spanish can serve as a tool to challenge the limits of the classroom, while also placing the video-essay work in dialogue with multiple communities.

Keywords: narrative voice, “el cine imperfecto”, Garwood, pandemic, gender

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The exaltation of nationalism in the Korean blockbuster: Ode to my father and Roaring Currents.

Sonia Dueñas (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) – 04:30

This video essay reflects on Park’s use of film as a propaganda tool to enhance her popularity at the height of her crisis in office by appealing to national pride through historical memory.

Keywords: blockbuster, Corea, nationalism

From the Archive

A risky misunderstanding. The three islands of Juan Antonio Bardem.

On the centenary of Juan Antonio Bardem’s birth, we take a look at an anecdotal episode in his career as a director in which production, genre and author intertwine and dispute over the brand of an irregular product, success and failure in equal parts, national and transnational, curious and banal. That of The Mysterious Island (1973) and its tricephalic result.

Luis Cemillán (UC3M)

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Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays
ISSN: 2659-4269
© Tecmerin Research Group
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid