Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Westminster
'Fall In Frame'
'Fall In Frame' (2009) is an experimental feminist film that draws on – yet, at the same time, challenges – the avant-garde feminist and structural film practices of the 1960s and 1970s. (16mm, colour, 19 min, distributed by LUX). Camera, edit, sound, direction and production by Sarah Pucill. Part-funded by Arts Council England. One of ‘recent films’ nominated for the Jarman Award 2011.
Please see portfolio for further documentation of research dimensions.
Following Chantal Akerman’s film 'Je, tu, il, elle' (1976), which moves between a radical, structuralist-inspired language and a more mainstream one encompassing dialogue and character, 'Fall In Frame' is similarly ambiguous in terms of film genre. Initially foregrounding the processes of its own production, the film moves on to portray a journey made by the protagonist. But 'Fall In Frame' takes this ambiguity further: there is no dialogue, so the performance is left unexplained. Pucill’s work explores the extent to which feminist avant-garde film practices can draw upon, play with, and at the same time disturb the singularity of the orthodox language of the structural film movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It also investigates the extent to which an experimental filmmaker can combine a variety of normally separate strategies to challenge ideological film practices (such as structural and feminist avant-garde) that differ in their conceptions of political radicalism. The originality of the film lies in its commitment to combining and playing across radical gestures of film language with equally radical gestures of gender criticism and anarchism. Through the gender politics of viewing, Pucill raises questions about the power relationship between film-maker/performer and her unknown audience. Is her performer, she asks, offering herself up as an object to be consumed by the assumed male gaze of the audience? Or does the premeditated, and probably unexpected, nature of her gesture leave the film-maker and her protagonist in control?
