I came across a work by Mark Wallinger in a book (‘Film and Video Art’ – ed. Stuart Comer) in which Wallinger placed a black sqaure n the centre of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1975 film ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. The edge of the film that is still revealed thus becomes a frame for what is not shown.
I like the different possibilities of this device. Firstly it censors the existing film by revealing only part of it. Secondly, this hidden element is the void into which the audience imagination steps. Thirdly it acts as a frame for something else. Could that something else be another frame?
To what extent can the films be abstracted? What happens if we repeatedly reveal only spatial sections of the films and present them next to each other?
Videosmithery 