BIOTECNIKA BLOG

Event Date as Display String:

Sunday, January 26, 2020, 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Location:

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

URL:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/places-in-cities-2020-01

Event Description:

In "Places in Cities," Schanelec affords her protagonist what every
teenage girl wants and few get, something more important than
happiness: the right to exist for herself. The film follows the
laconic Mimmi (Sophie Aigner) between Berlin and Paris, through sexual
encounters, family interactions, school and friendship. Across it all,
her emotional life remains opaque, as inaccessible to the viewer as it
is to those around her. Refusing the expressive face, refusing to
depict motivations and responses: described as such, it would be easy
to think that "Places in Cities" is an austere exercise in cruelty. It
would be easy, but it would be wrong. Schanelec's elliptical
unsentimentality is a kind of generosity, even an ethics. She skips
certain moments to allow others to expand, cultivating tonal
complexity through gaps and dilations. A judicious use of music by
Joni Mitchell, Portishead and others helps free characters from the
burden of emotion, cementing the film's seductive externality while
bathing it in feeling. In so many films, teenage girls are pinned down
like butterflies under glass, curious specimens to be fetishized or
tamed. In "Places in Cities," Mimmi escapes — with strength and
uncertainty, pleasure and sadness. - Erika Balsam

UID:

http://uid.trumba.com/event/141563645

Event Start Date as Date Type:

Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 19:00 to 21:00

Thumbnail:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgCehDqjxpZvh8NaO26uXmZL.jpg

Detail Image:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgCplEU04OYl8ftUuhi5GHY8.jpg

Feature Image:

Featured:

No

https://www.harvard.edu/preview/featured/events/places-cities