Silent Movie

Presented only in theatres.

This film is part of the FIFA Expérimental program Les 50 ans du Groupe Intervention Vidéo – GIV.

Silent Movie by Freda Guttman was the first time I saw a video projected large-scale in an artist-run centre. At the time, I was mostly drawn to video art that was centred on language and narration. Yet here I was, mesmerized by a work without words or even sound. It both surprised me and changed my relationship to the medium. The short 8mm home movie is repeated three times in increasingly slow motion, highlighting details in the scene and eventually focusing on the young girl’s reaction in a close-up. When I watched it, the silence was loud. The video didn’t just direct me to ​“look at this” it also said ​“listen.”
The patriarchal relations between father, son, and daughter are evident in their body language. Each time the girl attempts to be drawn into the fold, she is pushed out. We witness her increasing discouragement and fatigue. Watching it now, I find myself contemplating how these experiences, often outside of conscious memory, become parts of who we are. I love showing this video to my students, who are, like me, always captivated by this powerful work.
– Monique Moumblow, guest programmer

Director’s statement:
Silent Movie is a reworking of 8mm home movie footage from the 1940s in which my father, my brother and I are framed in a family narrative. As we play our roles, written into the language of our bodies can be seen the cultural constructs of patriarchy and male privilege, as well as the female predicament of entrapment between enticement and rejection. The episode is retold three times in different treatments, using devices of slow motion, repetition, stilling, and close-up. While I have no conscious memory of the event and what I experienced emotionally at the time, it exists now in a de- and re-constructed reality that speaks to notions of autobiographical narrative and memory, the way technology mediates experience, and how we may re-know and re-present the forces that formed us.
– Freda Guttman