Abstract

This research-creation thesis is articulated around the making process of step, the experimental film that is a product of a collaboration with French dancer and choreographer Maroussia Vossen. The epistemological grounds for this project are the essay film and videodance genres and theorizations. I will explain how the encounter between these two genres allows me to complicate my understanding of the relation between moving bodies and moving camera as put in practice while filming. As a thread and core concept throughout this thesis, I will reflect upon what I call the camera-body-eye as an intersubjective relational experience that relies on improvised dance movement practice and reflexive filmmaking. I will similarly reflect upon the editing process as a reflexive choreographic act, thereby reinforcing the relationship between the essay film and videodance through step. Both the essay film and videodance genres were necessary influences on the making process of my film. The resulting work qualifies as a hybrid between the two: a videodance essay. From videodance, I borrow the desire for filming moving bodies with specific awareness for the way movement composes and is being composed in the space of the frame and screen, and subsequently how the moving images are being choreographed into a rhythmical assemblage. The influence of the essay film on my process relies on the importance I granted to producing a reflexive discourse on the medium and filmmaker’s subjectivity within the film. The work of 20th century experimental filmmaker Maya Deren as well as French film essayists Chris Marker and Agnès Varda will help me elaborate my argument.