Surveillance, Protest, Spectacle: Films by Michael Vass and Jem Cohen

(Experimental Documentary)
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) - Saturday, 8pm
The street-theater of a good protest should, through its very nature, provide a rich allegory for the systems it rails against and rich contrast to the street-theater of collective celebration that takes place outside any major sporting event. Yet both forms of spectacle can render control over an audience so absolutely that their will to object is taken away and a de facto participation results, merely through the act of observing. This intersection is central to Michael Vass' VANCOUVER #1-13 (NOTES FOR A REPORT…) (2012, 60 min, HD Video Projection), which uses the critical distance of a fictional intelligence-agent-as-narrator to weave a self-reflexive essay about the disparate goals of protesters and drunken revelers, while visually highlighting the many behavioral similarities between the two groups. Often relying on footage with a crisp and well-intentioned handheld aesthetic, Vass initially guides the viewer toward a left-wing interpretation of both the arrest of protesters during the 2010 G20 meeting in Toronto and the early public gatherings during Vancouver's Winter Olympics. However, as the "agent" assigned to view the "confiscated" tapes of a protester proceeds to analyze the motivations of the cameraperson in ever-greater detail, Vass' own perspective becomes increasingly less clear. While the structure is not a direct route to an essay film, the major point is to provide documentation of these two events through simultaneous objective and subjective lenses, highlighting the unseen hand of the artist in this process. The film questions the morality of street videography, both literally and figuratively, and conveys skepticism of direct documentation's ability to give agency to the protest filmmaker. Although uneven and, by its narrator's admission, ambiguous in its policy statement, it ultimately succeeds in using distanced intimacy to contextualize two events that represent opposite poles of living in a globalized world. Shorter in length but still great in impact are two brief videos by Jem Cohen, GRAVITY HILL NEWSREEL NO. 2 and GRAVITY HILL NEWSRELL NO. 4 (each 2011, 4 min, HD Video). These portraits of the Occupy Wall Street gatherings of 2011 are visually stunning and poetic in their construction and repetition. Equally ambiguous about the prospects of the protesters, they also place the filmmaker's conflicted emotions near the surface. Michael Vass in person. JH