{"id":7311,"date":"2019-09-08T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T09:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/?p=7311"},"modified":"2019-09-08T11:37:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T09:37:41","slug":"water-turtles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/2019\/09\/water-turtles\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Turtles \/ Tortugas aqu\u00e1ticas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WATER TURTLES \/ TORTUGAS AQUATICAS\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/355972800?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Text by Deborah Martin.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I have long been fascinated by the child\u2019s place in the films of Lucrecia Martel, and especially the ways in which the presence of the child in her work seems to shape the form of the film, making it childish and tactile, an engagement with sensory experimentation and play which also forms part of the narratives of the films. Within this rich field I have returned frequently to one image: that of a child\u2019s hands pressing up against the far side of a screen. This occurs in strikingly similar ways in <em>La ci\u00e9naga\/The Swamp<\/em> (Martel, 2001) and <em>La mujer sin cabeza\/The Headless Woman<\/em> (Martel, 2008) but also in the other film from Martel\u2019s \u2018Salta Trilogy\u2019, <em>La ni\u00f1a santa\/The Holy Girl<\/em> (2004). Such images gesture, variously, to <em>Persona<\/em> (Bergman, 1966), or to the visceral 1970s horror of Dario Argento. They evoke the cinema screen itself, collapsing the distance between the viewing subject and the viewed object, whilst appealing to the sense of touch, creating an intersubjective spectator-film relation.<sup>1<\/sup> In the clip from <em>La ci\u00e9naga<\/em> used in <em>Water Turtles<\/em>, the skin on Luchi\u2019s palms is moulded by the glass of the car window in a process which echoes the psychic mimesis he undergoes in narrative terms through his imaginary relationship to the film\u2019s real and imagined animals.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>A paper entitled &#8216;Montage, langage int\u00e9rieure, mentalit\u00e9 primitive: Eisenstein, Vygotsky, L\u00e9vy-Bruhl&#8217;, delivered by Antonio Somaini at the Colloquium &#8216;Penser le cin\u00e9ma au prisme de l&#8217;enfance&#8217; at University Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3 (April 2018) suggested to me a new understanding of these images of children\u2019s hands. Somaini drew on Eisenstein\u2019s own drawings of hands in different positions which were intended to express two different relationships to space: the pre-natal relation of the foetus and the post-natal relation to space which we come to assume as we develop as subjects (see fig. 1). Eisenstein\u2019s drawing of a hand, palm-outwards, pressing up against the inside wall of a concave space \u2013 the pre-natal form \u2013 &nbsp;reminded me of Luchi\u2019s hands and their positioning on the inside of the car windows, an echo of which also exists at the beginning of <em>La mujer sin cabeza<\/em>. I began to see these interior car spaces as uterine, and I was reminded of <em>La ci\u00e9naga<\/em>\u2019s emphasis on suspension, on aquatic environments, on waiting, on the sticky, swampy and viscous, on mothers. I recalled Gonzalo Aguilar\u2019s reading of the <em>acousm\u00eatre<\/em> in Martel\u2019s work. One of the most striking stylistic features of these films is their emphasis on sound that emanates from an unseen, off-screen source, and the \u2018highly personal intra-familial associations\u2019 (Stam, cit. Aguilar, 90) of such sound, its recalling of the child\u2019s experience of the mother\u2019s voice whilst in the womb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"704\" height=\"1004\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7342\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01.jpg 704w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01-105x150.jpg 105w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01-210x300.jpg 210w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01-696x993.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/190_01-295x420.jpg 295w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 704px) 100vw, 704px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 1. Sergei M. Eisenstein, drawing on the theme \u201cVolume and Space\u201d (October 1945).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Catherine\u2019s methodology, which involves repeated viewing of the sequences using split screens and slow motion, allowed for much more subtle and nuanced understandings of the relationship between the two sequences to emerge: the resonances between the images themselves and the discussion of the turtles and the swimming pool; the adults which in both cases eventually encroach on or break into this sealed, child\u2019s world; the ways in which moments of physical closeness and affection are precipitated by the presence of children and contribute to the film\u2019s attempts to overcome bodily solitude, about which I speak more in the voiceover. Decisions we made brought new meanings to the material, or accentuated existing ones in unexpected ways: the slowing of motion in the clip from <em>La ci\u00e9naga<\/em> suggests the idea of the children moving in a viscous medium and the sense of immersion so common across Martel\u2019s filmmaking. Its effect on their voices augments the sense of the otherworldly which is ever-present in that film and seems to refer to another moment in which the same young girls who speak here experiment with the effect on their voices of speaking into a whirring fan. The layering of images in the third section of <em>Water Turtles<\/em> creates a series of planes of focus which is characteristic of much of Martel\u2019s filmmaking, and a series of shadowy figures in the background which recall the aesthetics of <em>La mujer sin cabeza <\/em>in particular.<sup>2<\/sup> The dominant blue and green combined colour scheme of the two clips underscores the presence of the aquatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On watching <em>Water Turtles <\/em>for the first time, I found myself extraordinarily moved, something that I had not experienced when watching either of the sequences which appear in it. This effect seemed to be experienced by others on watching it, too; my friend, the film scholar Isabelle McNeill commented that what made the ideas in the video so moving, so \u2018felt\u2019, was \u2018something about the grain of the voice\u2019. It occurred to me that the use of voiceover itself \u2013 a disembodied and in this case, female \u2013 voice, in the context of this evocation of and meditation on intra-uterine space suggests all the more sharply the idea with which the video ends: that visual forms such as cinema can return us to this pre-history of the self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>1) My collaborator on the video Catherine Grant has made several videos about this motif across a range of films, including one which links it to the notion of haptic visuality, film criticism and metacinematic discourse: <em>Touching the Film Object (2011), <\/em>published in two versions (one with an audio commentary) online here: <a href=\"http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/bonus-tracks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">\u201cBonus Tracks: The Making of Touching the Film Object and Skipping ROPE (Through Hitchcock\u2019s Joins)\u201d<\/a>, <em>Frames Cinema Journal<\/em>, 1(1), 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2) \u201cPlanes of Focus\u201d was the title given to a 2011 University of Sussex symposium on the work of Lucrecia Martel. This event was organised by Catherine Grant and at it she presented the first version of a video essay about <em>La mujer sin cabeza<\/em>, which builds on this aspect of Martel\u2019s mise en scene. The completed video essay has recently been published online: \u2018El embrujo de&nbsp;<em>La mujer sin cabeza<\/em>\u2018 [\u2018The Haunting of&nbsp;<em>The Headless Woman\u2019<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 Video and text in Spanish with English Translation],&nbsp;<em>Tecmerin: Revista de Ensayos Audiovisuales<\/em>, 2, &nbsp;Julio 2019, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/tecmerin.uc3m.es\/revista-2-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">Espa\u00f1ol<\/a>.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tecmerin.uc3m.es\/en\/journal-2-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">English<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Facts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Text and voiceover: Deborah Martin.<\/li><li>Video: Catherine Grant.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Literature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Aguilar, Gonzalo (2008). <em>New Argentine Film: Other Worlds<\/em>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VIDEO-ESSAY. Water Turtles \/ Tortugas Aqu\u00e1ticas is a video essay by Deborah Martin and Catherine Grant exploring similar scenes from two films in Lucrecia Martel&#8217;s Salta trilogy: <em>La ci\u00e9naga<\/em> \/ <em>The Swamp<\/em> (2001) and <em>La mujer sin cabeza<\/em> \/ <em>The Headless Woman<\/em> (2008). The video centres on the ways in which the playful presence of child characters is key in shaping both the forms and narratives of Martel&#8217;s films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":7339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[241],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7311"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}