Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image

Editorial v12n2

2025-10-10T21:52:05+01:00

Editorial of issue 2, volume 12 of Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image.

“The portrait that you escape from”: Reassemblages of the subject in Agnès Varda’s Elsa la Rose (1966)

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This paper aims to study Agnès Varda’s short film Elsa la Rose (1966) as a portraiture operation in which the filmmaker seeks to understand how the image of writer and translator Elsa Triolet is constructed in the literary works of her husband, the poet Louis Aragon. Based on an analysis of the film's editing techniques, the essay seeks to understand how the work creates a fragmentary portrait of Elsa, shaped by historical events and the imaginative powers of her portrayer, Aragon, reinterpreting the poet's verses through the interplay with archival images, off-screen narration, and the repetition of images.

The 1990s in Portuguese Cinema: A Historical and Aesthetic Analysis of Glória by Manuela Viegas

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This article undertakes an aesthetic analysis of Glória (1999), the sole feature-length film directed by Manuela Viegas, situating it within the broader framework of recent Portuguese cinema history. Since the 1980s, Viegas has established herself as a prominent editor of several pivotal works in Portuguese cinema, including Conversa Acabada (1981) by João Botelho, Silvestre (1981) and À Flor do Mar (1986) by João César Monteiro, Gestos e Fragmentos – Ensaio Sobre os Militares e o Poder (1984) by Alberto Seixas Santos, O Sangue (1990) by Pedro Costa, and A Idade Maior (1991) by Teresa Villaverde, among others. Glória was produced during the 1990s, a particularly fruitful period for Portuguese cinema. This decade was characterized, on the one hand, by continuity, with Portuguese cinema remaining attuned to prevailing aesthetic and formal trends in global filmmaking, and on the other hand, by rupture, particularly regarding questions of identity. During this period, Portuguese cinema sought to transcend the restrictive boundaries of “national” identity, rejecting essentialist notions of “Portugueseness” in favor of a more transhistorical and transnational perspective. In recent years, efforts to reconfigure the historiography of Portuguese cinema have emphasized the pluralization and decentralization of its canonical narrative. This ongoing process has foregrounded the imperative to address significant lacunae, particularly the systematic marginalization of women’s contributions to cinema. This encompasses not only directing but also editing, cinematography, sound design, production, and other domains of film practice. Women’s work in Portuguese cinema has frequently been consigned to the peripheries of critical and historical discourse. The case of Glória is illustrative in this regard, as the film remains underexplored in scholarly and critical literature.

Introduction to the Special Section: Methodological and conceptual challenges in cinematic Arts-Based Research

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This Speçcial Section of Aniki journal addresses the methodological and conceptual challenges posed to Arts-Based Research in the field of cinematic arts. This type of research, still in consolidation, intersects arts, sciences, and the humanities, proposing an ecology of practices that value creation as a form of knowledge. Practice-based artistic research challenges traditional academic norms by introducing hybrid, interdisciplinary, and speculative methods, expanding the epistemological and aesthetic scope of research. The Section brings together five articles selected from various submissions, highlighting the socio-cultural impact of artistic practices in audiovisual media. Júlia Rodrigues analyzes the film A Media Voz (2019), by Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez, as a poetic autoethnography of exile and identity. Brian McKenna discusses how audiovisual technologies, while enabling, can restrict artistic autonomy if not critically appropriated. Vivian Castro Villarroel proposes the audiovisual essay as a method to explore memories of deindustrialization, intertwining image, sound, and archive. Tania de León investigates virtual reality drawing as an immersive and somatic gesture, rethinking presence and the body as creative agents. Finally, Diana Toucedo, through the lens of film editing as a political act, writes a text in which creativity is described as the ability to be touched by wonder and the desire to respond to what astonishes us. This set of reflections emphasizes the ability of cinema and visual arts to generate sensitive, political, and situated knowledge, promoting the emergence of new languages and methodologies. Thus, the dossier reaffirms the potential of artistic research not only to transform creation itself, but also the ways of receiving and studying it, opening space for counter-hegemonic, decolonial, feminist, queer, and ecological epistemologies.

Poetics of Displacement in the Essay Film

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This article investigates the movements of deterritorialization in cinema, analyzing how experiences of exile, migration, and diaspora reverberate within the diegetic space of narratives. Through the film A Media Voz (2019) by Cuban filmmakers Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez, we reflect on the subjective, historical, and political dimensions of these displacements and their inscription in cinematic form. By putting autoethnographic practice into perspective (Russell 1999), we examine how the directors stage their subjectivities and construct a sense of otherness in the interstices of the fragmented self. The article proposes a rapprochement between contemporary “accented cinemas” (Naficy 2001) and the essay film, highlighting how the essayistic form operates in a “third space”, open to the fractures and transformative processes of migrant and diasporic identities. "In this context, we propose the concept of displacement landscapes to reflect on affective geographies that emerge from the subjective inscription of bodies, voices, and gestures of those who inhabit in-between spaces — whether symbolic, linguistic, or social.

On Prescriptive Technological Modes of Cinematic Research Methods and Artistic Autonomy

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Ursula Franklin’s delineation of “holistic” and “prescriptive” modes of technology offers a useful lens for viewing cinematic methods of artistic research. As new cinematic tools become available to researchers, artistic autonomy can be impacted by the weight of media infrastructures, which often assign tasks to their users, rendering user behaviours as the outputs of technological systems. A suggested strategy for researchers is to adopt “self-reflexivity” as an inherent aspect of cinematic research methodologies, thereby embedding critical attitudes towards new-media technological environments.

The Audiovisual Essay as a Method of Artistic Research: Around capitalism and deindustrialization

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The article proposes a theoretical-methodological reflection on the processes of conception and editing of the film Memories of Deindustrialization (HD video, 20', color, 2025). The film, an essay on places of deindustrialization, focused on the textile industry in São Paulo (Brazil) and Santiago (Chile), is a reflection on the obsolescence of manual labour and the destruction of knowledge in the world of work. Starting from some references of 20th century engaged art, I discuss the ideas of the audiovisual essay and the concept of abstraction, exploring the main theoretical reflections that underpinned the production of the film. In this sense, I propose the essay form as a method of artistic investigation for thinking about social relations in capitalism.

Drawing with the Whole Body. Gesture in Immersion

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This essay begins with a central question: what does it mean to draw “with the whole body” in virtual reality environments? To explore this idea, I undertook a broader inquiry that allowed me to examine both my own drawing experience and that of others. The text is structured as follows: the first section reflects on the difficulty of defining drawing. Next, I explore how the act of drawing with the whole body can be understood, considering different perspectives and practical approaches. Finally, I analyze drawing in virtual reality environments, emphasizing the body's active participation within this medium. The ideas are framed through a personal interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, highlighting the concepts of body and perception. This essay invites reflection on the relationship between the body and the trace.

Editing, Connection and Resistance

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The practice of film editing offers a fertile ground for artistic research, where form, content, and thought converge in a dialectical process of creation and reflection. This text explores how editing, understood as a generative and epistemological act, transcends the boundaries of industrial narrative to become a space of artistic, aesthetic, ethical, and political inquiry. From a genealogical, Benjaminian, and performative perspective, it examines how editing allows for the connection of times and spaces, traces memories, and opens pathways toward possible futures. This approach generates an expanded field of audiovisual creation where images work by association, connection, interrogating, and cohabiting with the creators in a process of symbolic and affective exchange. Thus, editing is revealed as a transformative gesture capable of fostering new collective imaginaries, critical epistemologies, and questioning perception, offering a profound reflection on the political and ethical potential of cinema as a tool for research and creation.

A Work on Memory. Interview with Dídio Pestana

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An interview with Dídio Pestana, director of Sobre Tudo Sobre Nada (2018), which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, in which he discusses the production process of his diary film, from the shooting to the editing methodology. Pestana recounts the beginning of his career in cinema as a sound designer, the importance of the collaborations he had in documentary projects, and the start of the diary practice with analog cameras. The director describes his approach to filmmaking, his inspirations in diaristic cinema and the relationship he has with the images he has filmed. The editing of the footage and the process of re-signifying archive images are also part of the topics analyzed by the diarist in this interview.

Beast, Sphere, Ballpoint; Cinema Dialectically

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Critical review of the book Cinema e Dialéctica: Uma Gramática Profunda (2024), written by Sérgio Dias Branco.

Dialogical Mirror

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In Espelho Mágico: Uma história do cinema, Francisco Valente reflects upon a vast and rich selection of films which formed him as a spectator. Such a reflection reveals or suggests dialogues among the films analysed, and is conducted in the form of an invitation to a dialogue with other spectators.

Lumière Classics: Digital cinephilia and the heritage cinema

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The 16th edition of the Lumière Festival unveiled the programme of ‘New Restorations’ and ‘Treasures & Curiosities’ featured in the Lumière Classics section. Once again, the city of Lyon packed its cinemas to celebrate the excellence of the restoration of heritage film and its large connection with digital cinephilia.