The serpentine entrenchments grafted onto identity and notions of self by technology; The false promises of accessibility and the corrosive effects such excess can place on the ego. The entrapments and oppression of the information age, one in which our flesh and consciousness are constantly prodded and purveyed through our overly connected world in which there is no escape. Videophobia draws from the technophobia common in J-Horror to deliver a quietly penetrating study of alienation and the inescapable nature of modernity. This is an immersive exhibition of alienation in the modern world, one in which the grand edifices of technology - the pervasive screens that inhabit every aspect of our life from cell phones, to laptops - can create a new form of emotional and physical confinement, depersonalization through overabundance. Patriarchal norms and gender imbalances/injustices are profiled as this woman loses control quite literally of her own image yet the film also seems intent on reaching beyond notions of gender or even material concerns, striving to encompass the loss of self in the milieu of modernity. Through the film's high-contrast black and white imagery, Videophobia provides an expressive lens in which the cold, mechanical present of modern-day Tokyo, a spatiality of glass, concrete, and steel, perfectly coalesces with he metaphysical journey in which the loss of control over one's own image leads to the distortion of self. Not so much a film about the artificiality of video connection but of the omnipresence of this system and its expansiveness (the internet) in which there is no control
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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