vol. 5, issue 2: shorts Archives - cléo

Editors’ Note: Shorts

cléo journal — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:41:09 +0000

With this issue of cléo, we wanted to keep it brief. We’re not going to lie: it was partly in hopes of getting a bit more rest and relaxation during the summer months, but we soon found that brevity doesn’t necessarily equate to a lack of profundity. (Twitter fans, rejoice!) Editing this issue opened us […]

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Dance and Child’s Play in Wasp and Small Deaths

juan velàsquez-buriticá — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:40:23 +0000

Almost halfway through her short film Wasp (2003), Andrea Arnold decides to take a break from the onward flow of the narrative and send her main characters into a kind of recess. Zoe (Natalie Press) comes out of the pub where she is flirting with a man called David to meet her kids in a […]

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Wild White West: Colonialism and Barbara Loden’s The Frontier Experience

Chelsea Phillips Carr — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:38:34 +0000

In 1970, Barbara Loden made her directorial debut with Wanda. A landmark of feminist filmmaking, Wanda features Loden as the titular character, a woman who drifts through life with a series of abusive men. Loden never made another feature film. She did, however, complete two shorts in 1975: The Boy Who Liked Deer and The […]

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First Kiss: The awakening erotics of Camila Saldarriaga’s ¡Mais Duro!

Monica Uszerowicz — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:33:17 +0000

I remember the moment my self-awareness expanded to include eroticized curiosity about other people—I was five when I had my first kiss, with another girl, in front of a porcelain Precious Moments clock depicting two dancing children. “You do what the girl does and I’ll do what the boy does,” she said, as if they […]

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My Secret: I Was a Teenage Serial Killer

willow maclay — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:26:33 +0000

In Bikini Kill’s 1992 punk anthem “White Boy”, lead singer Kathleen Hanna screams during the chorus: “White boy. Don’t laugh. Don’t cry. Just die.” The song is a release of the pent-up female wrath that stems from dealing with day-to-day sexism, both casual and severe. Hanna was not calling for the death of all men […]

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Black Women and the Edit of Shame: Alile Sharon Larkin’s The Kitchen

ayanna dozier — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:23:59 +0000

While the disparate output of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers, or the L.A. Rebellion, has never seen more critical recognition than in present day, mainstream coverage still leaves much to be discovered. The movement, spanning a 25-year period (1968-1993), was borne of a diversity initiative by the UCLA Film and Television Program, giving […]

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Laugh at the Face that Eats You: Cecelia Condit’s Possibly in Michigan

Courtney Duckworth — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:21:56 +0000

“I’m someone who’s had more dead bodies in my closet than most people.” Cecelia Condit attempts to hide the smile accompanying this enigmatic statement, disclosed during a recent screening of her video shorts featuring works spanning over 30 years. Moments later, describing her “luck” in sourcing two sisters fluent in trauma to shoot a recent […]

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vol. 5, issue 2: shorts

kiva reardon — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:18:28 +0000

“If you think of something, do it.” Lydia Davis, the sovereign of all things brief, has a good point. At cléo we thought of something, which turned into: the SHORTS issue! We were to curious to explore this theme because short films never seem to get enough love–despite the fact that the form is a fertile ground for new […]

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Sewn to the Celluloid: The Films of Nazlı Dinçel

Michael Sicinski — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:05:15 +0000

The films of Turkish-American artist Nazlı Dinçel can provoke a high degree of discomfort for a viewer, but that is only the beginning. While there are several varieties of provocation within Dinçel’s arsenal, it’s the explicit sexuality that has already begun to make her work notorious, tearing at the straitjacket of decorum. But Dinçel provokes […]

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