Rotterdam 2022: a sampling (part one) (Patreon)

(pictured above: Het Huis van de Whopper, Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Glass Life (Sara Cwynar, 2021)

It's strange. I suspect that on a semi-objective level, Cwynar's films are among the most accessible works of the current experimental film scene. And yet for me, she's definitely been an acquired taste. There's always a certain difficulty when an artist adopts the forms and strategies she means to critique, and Cwynar's films, which are clearly about the mind-numbing assault of the Internet age and fast capital, have prompted me to put up the same defenses as I do against overload-culture itself. 

Then again, I have become more and more intrigued by works that bombard the spectator, giving them more information and stimuli than he or she could ever possibly absorb. After all, it could be the case that the same unconscious processes that provoke our desires to click or consume could also be turned against those very impulses. I'm still not sure. In any case, Glass Life is in many ways Cwynar's most reflective piece -- no "glass" pun intended. In many respects it's a self-portrait. Not only does Cwynar's image appear many times in the film. 

The film itself is a bit of an offloading of the artist's own unconscious, as she scrolls through her own photo files on an iPad, or concludes with a verbal rundown of the names of her image folders. In this respect, it's a bit like seeing inside Cwynar's own memory palace, understanding how someone who is forever diving headlong into the content maw works to organize her own reactions to it. And of course, like all of Cwynar's work, it is gorgeous, arranged according to the color and compositional dictates of high-end graphic design in order to lead the eye straight to the center of self-awareness.

Punctured Sky (Jon Rafman, 2021)

Undeniably absorbing, Punctured Sky turns out to be a bit less than meets the eye. Much like Cwynar, Rafman adopts the formal language of his object of analysis, in this case digital RPGs and other absorptive gaming platforms. The film generates a patently fake narrative space, with image-objects stuck flatly against their environments. One is clearly never meant to get lost in this virtual world, which is interesting since Rafman's story places what we are seeing at a certain remove. That is, we are seeing a "real" diegetic space in which characters are engaging with the second-order virtual spaces of gaming. This becomes a black hole, both formally and narratively.

The narrator is contacted by an old high school gamer friend who is ill, and they discuss a forgotten video game called Punctured Sky. There is no record of its existence, and this very absence -- the fact that some rogue piece of data has eluded the Internet's all-consuming Library of Babel -- becomes a form of psychological horror in itself. I remember it, but if Google turns up no hits, was it real? As I say above, the answer is a bit disappointing, since Rafman makes only the slightest changes to a popular creepypasta. If you've ever read "Candle Cove," you'll see exactly where Punctured Sky is going. But Rafman is a solid digital raconteur, and that's certainly something.

Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (Pedro Neves Marques, 2022)

In 2019, TIFF Wavelengths featured Marques' debut film The Bite, which I did not especially like. He seemed to be working out some themes regarding body-horror and disease, but his somewhat stilted dramatic approach undermined his efforts. His newest film, I'm pleased to report, achieves a near-perfect balance of Cronenbergian subject matter and ultra-Portuguese formal restraint. Not a film about transhumanism per se, Becoming Male is more a film about the emotional impact of transhumanism. Marques shows us two intimate couples, all four of them friends. Conflict arises over their respective attempts to conceive a child.

Thing is, Becoming Male asks us to consider a future in which women's ovaries can be implanted into male bodies (in the belly, arm, or thigh), then fertilized in vitro. In this way, men are able to carry the zygote until it becomes too large, at which point in must be inserted into a surrogate's uterus. Vicente (played by the director) is trying to have this procedure done, with the ambivalent support of his partner Carl (Nuno Nolesco). Meanwhile, Mirene (Isabel Costa) is having fertility problems with her husband André (Zé Bernardino).

Marques treads on difficult ground in this film, since Mirene begins to channel her own frustrations into jealousy of Vicente. She questions whether the procedure is ethical or fair, broaching the issue of assigned vs. medically altered sex. By adopting this future-tense premise, Becoming Male touches on contemporary anxieties and exclusionary protection of "natural" identities. (I.e., the TERFS.) But instead of laying out all the political positions ever so carefully, Marques introduces doubt and defensiveness as human reactions that, in the name of a better, more inclusive future, must be worked through and overcome. I think this is not only a good film but an important one.