Personal Film Essay

 Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

11/11/20

Personal Film Essay

This week we viewed the films Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich (1990) and Tongues Untied by Isaac Julien (1990). According to Nichols both of these films fall under the category of the first-person essay or personal film essay because they cover the “personal account of some aspect of the author/filmmaker’s experience or point of view”. Both films, through the use of this method, create stories that are emotionally intense and extremely good at conveying personal experiences.

Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich includes audio of short stories played over film that looks like a home video. Together they create a picture of a girl's life as she grows up and details the relationship between her and her father. Aside from the more obvious elements that convey the story of a father and daughter, I believe that the structure of the film also does a great deal in giving the film this feel. First off, the way that the phrases/stories are broken up in sink or swim reminded me of the anecdotal words of wisdom that children receive from their parents. Each of the stories told is an exapmple a different element that complicates her relationship with her father (family relations, work, gender, power struggles/authority). Secondly, the use of home video seems purposeful as it not only usually relates to families but is also a good example of the way that people tend to present positive stories of their families while the true story (the narration) may be much more complicated and dark.

Tongues Untied by Isaac Julien portrays the experience of what it meant to be a black, gay, man in the 80s/90s. This film is politically charged and tackles difficult topics like sexuality, gender, race and the complicated ways that these elements interact. The film also seems to touch on cultural appropriation and tokenization of both black and gay culture. Another thing I found interesting was the way the opening of the film seems to highlight the ways that things that may be completely acceptable for wealthy/white people or even regarded as art are not seen in the same way when done by poor/black people, for example, poetry versus rap. Relating to rap another interesting aspect of the film is the rhythm created through the use of rhythmic lines, snapping, and some dance-like elements. 

Lastly, I’d like to address a quote from one of our readings entitled The Totalizing Quest of Meaning (1993) by Trinh T. Minh-Ha. The quote reads:

This involves an extensive and relentless pursuit of naturalism across all the elements of cinematic technology. Indispensable to this cinema of the authentic image and spoken word are, for example, the directional microphone (localizing and restricting in its process of selecting sound for purposes of decipherability) and the Nagra portable tape recorder (unrivaled for its maximally faithful ability to document). Lip-synchronous sound is validated as the norm; it is a "must"; not so much in replicating reality (this much has been acknowledged among the fact-makers) as in "showing real people in real locations at real tasks." (Even nonsync sounds that are recorded in-context are considered "less authentic" because the technique of sound synchronization and its institutionalized use have become "nature" within film culture).

This quote seems to say a lot about the way reality is created within the arts. It seems to state that although something may not actually be more realistic, it may be used because it seems more realistic. It also seems to address the way these norms for what is realistic are determined by the industry. This reminded me of a conversation we had at the beginning of the semester surrounding the editing techniques used in Feeling My Way and whether or not they made the film more or less realistic.