Tuesday 2 November 2010

Split Screen Studies

Establishing Split: On REQUIEM FOR A DREAM from Catherine Grant on Vimeo.


The above is a FILMANALYTICAL, REQUIEM // 102 and FILM STUDIES FOR FREE video essay by Catherine Grant. It explores the use of split screens in some early sequences in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Darren Aronofsky, 2000).
    The essay was made according to principles of Fair Use (or Fair Dealing), primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in November 2010.

Today, Film Studies For Free presents an entry of links to online studies of the cinematic split screen. Rather excitingly (for this blog, at least), the resources include the above video essay on this very topic ... by FSFF's author. 

The essay is a contribution to the Requiem for a Dream // 102 Project, conceived by its inventor Nick Rombes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit, Mercy, as a form of "collective, distributed film criticism". Requiem // 102 is modelled loosely on Rombes' ongoing 10/40/70 project, in which he “reads” three screen captures from a given film taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks.

In this case, Nick has invited 102 contributors from across the film criticism spectrum to look at, or otherwise be inspired by, one frame from each minute of Darren Aronofsky’s 102 minute-long film Requiem for a Dream (2000), a movie that unsettled many audience members when it was first released in cinemas ten years ago.

To learn more about Requiem // 102, check out the 102 Project’s “About” page and/or follow it on Twitter. Chuck Tryon's great first post on the film is here. For an accompanying written text for the above video essay on the frame capture from 02:09 of Requiem for a Dream, visit FSFF's little sister site, Filmanalytical.

3 comments:

Strcprstskrzkrk said...

Nice. You may be interested in this split/dual-screen showing of the two Funny Games films we're organising in December in Liverpool: http://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on/classic-tuesday-funny-games---dual-experiment?listing_id=1362

Michael Guillen said...

I'm a little late to this; but, have to compliment you on this fantastically articulate visual essay on split screen usage. I thoroughly enjoyed your thesis and how you have presented it here. Congratulations. More!!

Catherine Grant said...

Thanks David, and Michael for your nice comments - sorry to be so late in acknowledging them! Michael, I am indeed at work on more video essays, and your encouragement is much appreciated.