Exhibition Statement

Introduction

What do you think of when asked to define your identity? With that question in mind, this project combines filmmaking and poetry to question one’s sense of identity while sympathizing with the isolation and discomfort felt during a period of immense growth.  Taking on the form of essay filmmaking, the project is structured into three vignettes that include coinciding poetry narration, provoking questions rather than providing answers.  At the heart, this short film is a grappling of one’s identity, asking questions as to how one occupies spaces differently due to their inherent physical identity, while exploring the human desire for belonging and where one looks to find that.

Literature Review

Curiosities about the “eye” seen through the lens of cinema, were explored by French theorist and filmmaker Jean Epstein.  He was a man known for his writings on cinema and his influential silent films.  Epstein claims cinema to be “poetry’s most powerful medium” (Epstein 318).  He speaks specifically on how cinema changes the purpose and meanings of objects and things, a representation of something more than as it explicitly exists. This project grants the artist space to explore the relationship between the camera and the scene, as a vital tool to attempt to reflect the experience of someone searching for identity and meaning for self, without the aid of dialogue.

This project explores how the generalized construction of identity influences the way people naturally perceive one another.  It prompts the examination of the way in which analyzing identity through an intersectional lens allows for a more authentic representation of the human experience. Scholars Michael Omi and Howard Winant, in Racial Formation, explain that race is a social construct as is gender. Americans have been conditioned to form constructs through influential sources perpetuating these habits of racial stereotyping, from parents, family, film and media (Omi & Winant 55-56).  When reflecting on identity and the privilege that may come with that, intersectionality is essential to how a person reacts and interprets other people they encounter. Essay films, as an alternative form of filmmaking, can help deconstruct these ideas as they provoke questioning.  Scholar Laura Rascaroli describes Essay filmmaking as “a hybrid form that crosses boundaries and rests somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction cinema” (Rascaroli 183). This project attempts to adapt an intersectional framework using the method of essay filmmaking to ultimately promote more reflection as to how we may occupy spaces differently, and a project for the artist to grapple with their own identity. 

Methods

Throughout the creative process, this project has drawn inspiration from the French New Wave and Art Cinema to showcase elements of authenticity and realism.  Compositional influence is taken from films such as News from Home and à Bout de Souffle (Breathless), where the subject’s relationship with the camera is more realistic, than theatrical.  The project takes on a form of essay filmmaking, obliging contemplation from the viewer as opposed to providing answers.  In addition to the visual form, poetry structure and content takes influence from the work of Audre Lorde and Christopher Salerno’s poetry collection, The Man Grave. The artist studied their work to understand effective use of language to articulate complex ideas.  More specifically, Lorde’s pioneering of intersectionality through poetry and Salerno’s grappling with masculinity and privilege as a man.  The artist also close read scholarly articles related to the formation of identity to educate hisself in its construction.  While the editing and sound design is essential to making the two feel cohesive, film form and poetry drive the project. 

Audience & Impact

This film is intended for two audiences: those unaware of their privilege within the spaces around them, and young adults in a phase of immense growth, making sense of where they are now, where they have been, and where they want to go. This capstone will force an audience to self-reflect and empathize, with the goal that they walk away with a new awareness to the complexities of identity, and learn something about their self.  Through this project the artist has formed a new awareness of identity within the framework of intersectionality. He has learned that individual identity is allowed to be everchanging, and found a comfort in visualizing the experience of unfound identity. 

References

Akerman, Chantal, director. News From Home. 1977

Appiah, Anthony. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity, Creed, Country, Color, Class, Culture. First ed., Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. 

Bergman, Ingmar, director. Persona. 1966

Crenshaw, Kimberlé “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8.

Epstein, Jean. “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie.” Afterimage, translated by Tom Milne, 10 (1981), pp. 20-23.

Godard, Jean-Luc. Godard on Godard; Critical Writings. Viking Press, 1972.

Godard, Jean-Luc, director. À bout de souffle (Breathless). 1960

Godard, Jean-Luc, director. Bande à part (Band of Outsiders). 1964

Lorde, Audre. “A Woman Speaks.” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, W.W Norton and Company Inc. 1997

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. Third ed., Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Rascaroli, Laura. “The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments.” Essays on the Essay Film, 2017, pp. 183–196.

Salerno, Christopher. The Man Grave: Poems. A Karen & Michael Braziller Book / Persea Books, 2021.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my faculty advisor, Gabi Robinson-Tillenburg, for her constant guidance and encouragement along the way.  Thank you to the Arts Scholars Faculty, Heather-Erin Bremenstuhl and Harold Burgess, for giving me a formative academic and professional education in the arts these past two years in the program. Thank you to my friend Rowan for acting as the Man and being patient with my creative process. Thank you to Jenna, Sarah, Ari, Sameera, and Professor Lara Payne for their time workshopping my poems. Thank you to the Cinema and Media Studies department for lending equipment for the film.