The Video Essay is a joint project of MUBI and FILMADRID International Film Festival. Film analysis and criticism forged a new path with the arrival of the video essay. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema through moving images. This non-competitive section of the festival is designed to offer this format the platform and visibility it deserves.
This selection of seven video essays was programmed by the editors of Notebook and the programmers of FILMADRID. In the coming weeks, a video essay from the program will premiere each Friday on Notebook.
“The Phantoms of Malmkrog: Where Lies the Expression in Cinema?” by Kasra Karbasi and Amin Komijani
In what way does cinema convey emotions to us? How does the connection of the elements of a scene with its aesthetic choices arouse our feelings? If—in a Bressonian way—we limit our perspective only to the (pure) cinematic expressive devices, which films have feelings to express? Which ones are alive before our eyes, and which ones are dead? Although the answer to this question is far beyond the capacity of one video, going along, step by step, with Cristi Puiu's Malmkrog (2020) gives us a rare opportunity to think about it. A film that seems to pose such a question and has possible answers in it, it is as much a continuation of Puiu's two previous narrative features—Aurora (2010) and Sieranevada (2016)—as it is a break from them. And maybe only the most faithful audiences of Puiu, the creator of one of the most special cinematic languages of recent years, can go through it and not return disappointed. It is the most extreme of Puiu's films yet, a fortress not to be conquered and a laboratory for testing the expressive devices of cinema. It's as if Puiu asked a question of himself (and of us): where lies the expression in cinema?