Issue 37
Vanishing Points

Cinematic Dunes: The Configuration of the Desert in Experimental Film and Video Art

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  • Albert Alcoz
Albert Alcoz
Facultad de Bellas Artes. Universidad de Barcelona
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.63700/1035

Published 2024-01-31

Keywords

  • Desert,
  • Experimental Film,
  • Artists' Video,
  • Landscape,
  • Horizon

How to Cite

Alcoz, A. (2024). Cinematic Dunes: The Configuration of the Desert in Experimental Film and Video Art. L’Atalante. Journal of Film Studies, (37). https://doi.org/10.63700/1035

Copyright (c) 2024 L'Atalante. Journal of film studies

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Deserts have influenced a number of experimental filmmakers and video artists who have visited them to make audiovisual pieces offering glimpses of unusual aesthetic connotations and unique epistemological considerations. The works analysed in this article place the desert in the main role, eschewing the informational objectives associated with conventional documentary and rejecting the functional quality assigned to the desert as a dramatic location in fiction feature films. These artists offer a different configuration of the desert, focusing on the sandy abstraction of its dunes, exploring the insignificance of the human figure in the face of its vastness, and imagining possible temporal representations of its horizons. This article considers the poetic, mythical and metaphysical nature of the desert through the analysis of various experimental films and video creations that study the idiosyncrasies of its landscape, reflecting on the existential connotations suggested by desert regions and testing out the multiple options offered by audiovisual techniques. These are pieces that range from lyrical abstraction to autobiographical testimony, from minimalist fiction to self-reflexive essay. The analysis of a film installation with an environmentalist discourse concludes this study of sounds and moving pictures that imagine new readings that can help us understand the importance of the desert.

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