Cinéma

44 pages booklet
20x27cm,
Offset print
Edition of 500

Layout: Marte Aas
Typography: Ulf Verner Carlsson
tipress forlag

Cinéma is a booklet made to accompany the black and white 16mm film Cinéma from 2010. Featuring the dancer Rukmini Chatterjee, the film explores the politics of representation via key elements such as gaze and gestures. Through her dance with the camera, Chatterjee actively refuses to become an object of orientalism and fetishization. She returns the spectator´s glare in a forceful and confrontational manner at the same time as she communicates by the use of distinct gestures related to the ancient Indian dance Bharatanatyam. An act of negotiation emerges between the dancer and the viewer by the scenic means of the film. The film thus investigates regimes of visibility, otherness and objectification. The booklet is constructed as a play with the scenic elements, the filmic space and narrative of the film, as well as contextualizing the film through texts by art critic and editor Jennifer Higgie and art historian Marit Paasche.