The Video Essay is a joint project of MUBI and FILMADRID International Film Festival. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative 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 working within images. With this non-competitive section of the festival, both MUBI and FILMADRID will offer the video essay format the platform and visibility it deserves. The seven selected works will premiere online from June 5 through June 11, 2023, on MUBI's online publication Notebook. The selection was made by the Notebook editors and FILMADRID.
Sound & Sight & Time by Victoria Oliver Farner
When cinema was young, defining its specificity, or finding what made it different and unique, was necessary in order to enhance its value and place it in the Olympus of the Arts.
Some of the distinctive features attributed to cinema are the strong identification between reality and representation, the synthesis of all the elements of the old arts into a new one, the collective experience of the spectators in the movie theater or the montage of images and sounds.
The exploration of these aspects, and many others, by thousands of filmmakers over time has created layers of history of cinema, a hegemonic language and a multitude of deviations.
In the eagerness to classify cinema, lists of the greatest films of all time have been created, which perhaps tell much more about the society that compiles them than about cinema itself.
In the same way, Sound & Sight & Time perhaps speaks more about me than about Citizen Kane, Vertigo, or Jeanne Dielman.—Victoria Oliver Farner
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Cuando el cine era joven, la definición de su especificidad, o encontrar qué era lo que lo hacía diferente y único, era necesaria con el objetivo de ponerlo en valor y situarlo en el olimpo de las Artes.
Algunos de los rasgos distintivos atribuidos al cine son la fuerte identificación entre la realidad y la representación, la síntesis de todos los elementos de las antiguas artes en una nueva, la experiencia colectiva de los espectadores en la sala de cine o el montaje de imágenes y sonidos.
La exploración de estos aspectos, y muchos otros, por parte de miles de cineastas a lo largo del tiempo ha ido creando capas de historia cinematográfica, un lenguaje hegemónico y multitud de desviaciones.
En el afán por clasificar el cine, se han ido creando listas que recogían las mejores películas de la historia, que quizás cuentan mucho más de la sociedad que las propone que del propio cine.
Del mismo modo, Sound & Sight & Time quizás hable más de mí, que de Citizen Kane, Vertigo, o Jeanne Dielman.—Victoria Oliver Farner