MFJ 75 “Boundaries”

Spring 2022

Boundaries—they appear everywhere we look. What can be said about the oppositions of form and content, subject and visual object, that structure the field of the moving image? And what about the restricted category of cinema itself, or within it the use of critical designations like artists’ moving image or experimental cinema?

MFJ issue No. 75 brings forth many boundary-defying articles: Jeanne Liotta’s embodied and elegiac article on hand-processed cinema shows us that any concept of a distinct cinematic universe is likely to unravel; Daryl Chin’s review of The Melancholy Lens by Tony Pipolo makes us aware that the reveries of cinema are most reflective of our own lives; writing on the Currents section of the 2021 New York Film Festival, Kim Knowles notices a boundary-defying desire in moving image artists’ curation “to move away from any form of specificity;” filmmakers Liat Berdugo and Peter Snowdon reflect on how moving images shape worlds beyond themselves in their critical dialog concerning vernacular media practices in the Middle East.

Other fascinating texts include Sandy Ding’s artist pages, which present an occultist model of moving image practice; Arindam Sen’s interview with German documentarian Ute Aurand, who discusses her films about India, Japan, and the United States; Justin Remes’s review of Erika Balsom’s new book Ten Skies, which poses questions to artifice and reality; Jonathan Ellis’ review of the differences at play in Dawoud Bey’s recent exhibition In This Here Place; and Andrzej Jachimczyk’s review of Lucy Raven’s astonishing work Ready Mix (2021).