This past fall, Turner Classic Movies joined forces with The Criterion Collection for an online streaming service with the aim of showcasing the best in classic, modern, world, and independent cinema, much to the delight of cinephiles everywhere. Inspired, we here at Cinapse decided to create FilmStruck Focus, a limited weekly series dedicated to exploring the best of one of the most diverse and exciting streaming services around.
Before seeing her featured on The Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, I had never heard of Athina Rachel Tsangari. Or had I? Turns out, much like the Divine Presence in the Footprints poem, she had been there all along. Every time I’ve watched Richard Linklater’s seminal Slacker, there she was, hidden in plain sight as ‘Cousin from Greece’ sitting outside a South Congress music club in Austin, Texas. Her association with Linklater continued with credits of both producer and actor in Before Midnight.
While FilmStruck has some of her full-length works, it’s her short films that will be explored here. They push boundaries in a most unsettling and gorgeous way.
Fit
Shot in Austin while Tsangari was a film student, Fit has “art film” written all over it. Using both black & white and color, Fit injects concrete absurdity into every situation it can. The opening shot is of two lovers kissing passionately, the camera close up on the action. Before you know it, marbles are falling out each mouth onto the floor. The participants don’t seem to notice or mind. In another scene, the main character talks into the black receiver of a rotary phone even as water begins to gush out, turning the apparatus into a kind of shower head.
With no plot to speak of, the viewer is left to enjoy the images and juxtapositions on the screen. A woman eats a seemingly normal breakfast in her kitchen but at a table sized for a child’s doll. Later, she sees how many eggs she can fit into her mouth. It’s really a trip, and a very intentional one at that.
The Capsule
Shot on the Greek isle of Hydra, The Capsule is Tsangari’s short-form magnum opus. This exploration of feminine identity feels very much of a piece of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. A tableau of ideas and movements are starkly presented over an intense half hour.
The film opens with six young women being “birthed” from various locales around the grand mansion in which the action takes place. One crawls out from underneath a veritable mountain of stacked furniture, and another is found behind an ancient vase in a hallway. Once gathered, the six go through several activities that can only be described as rituals. The most normal is a processional walking of goats, and the oddest might be an a capella recital of “California Dreaming” that turns into the most awkward of dance offs.
It becomes clear that the group is there in service of a mistress of the house, who guides their actions and engenders their devotion. Eventually, we find out she is immortal and is continually bringing in groups women in hopes of replacing her in eternal torment. It appears she has found the one, but as in all cyclical narratives, the substitution never comes to fruition, and the lady of the house continues on with a new group.
The unmistakable idea being explored is young women finding their way in the world, dealing with absurdity, cruelty, and sometimes joy. Tsangari has created a work with real power and depth, though its viewing will require effort from the audience.
24 Frames Per Century
This final piece is a light-hearted one and runs at just 2 1/2 minutes. Perched on the edge of a rock in the Aegean Sea, two industrial film projectors debate whether some unnamed entity will ever return. The optimist and pessimist harken to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and eventually the projectionist does appear and give meaning to these two machines’ very existence.
It’s all very choreographed and executed with a humorous touch. 24 Frames Per Century verges on being trite, but all in all delivers on a cleverness that is always welcome in the world of short film.