Steve McQueen’s postmodern ghost story, “Occupied City,” which lasts four and a half hours, challenges our understanding of how movies convey meaning. The film takes a pointillist approach to recounting history. Based on a book by McQueen’s wife, Bianca Stigter, “Occupied City” consists of numerous static shots of Amsterdam during the pandemic lockdown. Each shot is accompanied by a narrator (Melanie Hyams) who describes the crimes that occurred in that location during the Nazi invasion in the early 1940s.
The concept is deliberately repetitive, and its straightforward approach differs from the usual narratives that aim to elicit empathy. As I watched the film’s countless enumerations, my mind often wandered, evoking feelings of guilt and putting things in perspective. It is distressingly easy to forget or lose focus in the face of unimaginable horrors.
Every year, I make a point to watch a few films from the Revivals section, which showcases restored vintage titles. One that stood out was “Un rêve plus long que la nuit” (A Dream Longer Than the Night) by Niki de Saint Phalle, a French American artist. I had previously visited an exhibition by de Saint Phalle featuring a particularly memorable piece—a door-sized vaginal opening nestled between colossal legs. The film, both silly and terrifying, presents a pagan fever-dream that envisions a feminist revolution through the perspective of a young girl. Its attention to detail, particularly the astonishing variety of papîer-mâché penises, is remarkable.
Another noteworthy selection in Revivals is a series of shorts by Man Ray, renowned for his photographs but also known for his experimental films that transform ordinary objects into unfamiliar entities through the use of light and movement. For Man Ray, traditional photography aimed to capture reality, while his work created images that existed only in dreams and fantasies. In the digital age, with advanced film technologies available to artists, it is worth appreciating films with similar aspirations—to make tangible the surreal. In “The Human Surge 3,” director Eduardo Williams employs a 360-degree camera to capture the journeys of a multicultural group of friends from Peru, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka. Through eerie, elongated visuals reminiscent of Google Earth, Williams presents a remarkable vision of digital interconnectedness that transcends borders and language barriers in a psychedelic manner.