Touching bags as a form of love, a history of men shouting, and stagecraft under lockdown. Some stellar film-essays

This week’s audio-visual looks at the film-essay - which does exactly what it says: conducts an essay by means of filmic images, either that of existing movies or other appropriate footage. It’s an evolving art-form, and here are some choice examples, all chosen from the BFI’s extraordinary 2023 best film-essays list.

This first, and embedded above, has this text from Aeon:

“Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran

In Iran, films must conform to the government’s strict interpretation of Islam to be screened in theatres. This means that the skin of male and female characters can never touch, among many other restrictions. Irani Bag, created by the Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory, explores how prop bags are used as ‘mediators of touch’ in Iranian cinema.

The video essay features a collection of scenes from 1990 to 2018 in which bags stand in for hands, be they affectionately held, momentarily connecting or violently attacking. Through this framework, Tafakory provides a shrewd and stylish analysis of the how the language of Iranian film mediates between human nature and the country’s censorship.

For some cinephiles, the piece may bring to mind the Hays Code that governed filmmaking in Hollywood in the early to mid-20th century, providing a reminder that every popular art form is subject to rules that artists work within and around.

A brilliant project that looks at the rash of online concerts transmitted during the Covid lockdown, and edits together those parts where musicians were introducing their songs, or reacting to their ending - in the absence of a physical audience to respond. As the film-essayist says:

In the spaces between songs, seasoned stage, club, and television performers display their processes of navigating remote interactions with audiences, often acknowledging the unprecedented conditions of collective stress under which they seek to offer entertainment, community, peace. 

Another tour-de-force of editing, Men Shouting: A History In 7 Episodes deals with three films on the 2008 financial crash, The Big Short (2015), Margin Call (2011) and Too Big To Fail (2011). It does what it calls “parametric” editing - which seems to be a way of systematically picking up words, scenes and themes common to these movies. Artistically, what is created is a kind of flowing audio-visual stream, voices and faces overlapping like waves, set up by slides of critical framing. It’s a beguiling mix of the analytical and the surreal.