Visual Strategies in LA CIÉNAGA

Visual Strategies in LA CIÉNAGA

2 Episodes

Observations on Film Art No. 38

From the very first shot of her very first feature, LA CIÉNAGA, Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel laid claim to a distinctive, defiantly strange cinematic syntax unlike any other. In this edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor Kristin Thompson examines the surprising choices—uncomfortably tight framing, unusual camera positions, and soft- and out-of-focus lensing—that Martel uses to keep the identities of and relationships between her characters intriguingly opaque and to heighten the film’s stinging critique of bourgeois torpor.

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Visual Strategies in LA CIÉNAGA
  • Visual Strategies in LA CIÉNAGA

    Episode 1

    From the very first shot of her very first feature, LA CIÉNAGA, Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel laid claim to a distinctive, defiantly strange cinematic syntax unlike any other. In this edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor Kristin Thompson examines the surprising choices—uncomfortably ...

  • La Ciénaga

    Episode 2

    Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
    Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce

    The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...