The pol­i­tics of periph­er­al vision in con­tem­po­rary cinema

Last week, I was sud­den­ly with­out my iPhone for three days. With no head­phones to orches­trate my urban expe­ri­ence, zero noti­fi­ca­tions to val­i­date my exis­tence, and nowhere to look but direct­ly around me, I expe­ri­enced an almost sen­so­ry over­load. As I walked down the same street in Cam­ber­well that I walk down every day, I couldn’t believe how much I’d been miss­ing. Free from dig­i­tal tun­nel vision, the com­plex­i­ties of my direct sur­round­ings opened up; all around were every­day pock­ets of human life – lit­tle mir­a­cles, lit­tle tragedies. For those three days, I became invest­ed in my periph­ery, in the things that exist just to the side, almost out of frame.

My favourite film­mak­ers are the ones who explore the poten­tials of periph­er­al vision. In my opin­ion, it’s a crit­i­cal space for social com­men­tary. Solid­i­fy­ing his sta­tus as one of the most impor­tant film­mak­ers work­ing today, Sean Bak­er is mas­ter­ful in engag­ing the viewer’s periph­ery. His most recent work, The Flori­da Project, depicts a young moth­er on the social and finan­cial mar­gins of Amer­i­can soci­ety, and with­out judge­ment or objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. For the most part, we are embod­ied in the per­spec­tive of six-year-old Moonee, who is always on the quest for fun.

Moonee’s fun and games are the pri­ma­ry nar­ra­tive engine of The Flori­da Project, anchor­ing the view­er in a child’s non-judge­men­tal expe­ri­ence of the film’s world. Which is not to say that the sur­round­ing con­text isn’t one of com­plex­i­ty. Baker’s tools for dra­mat­ic expo­si­tion are inge­nious, espe­cial­ly with regards to Moonee’s moth­er. Halley’s week­ly strug­gle to make rent is not overt­ly drama­tised, it informs the every­day tex­ture of the film, with no autho­r­i­al ​“read­ing” of the sit­u­a­tion. When she resorts to pros­ti­tu­tion, we are only shown this through Moonee’s periph­er­al vision, who, sit­ting in the bath, turns to the side when a male stranger – a char­ac­ter the audi­ence doesn’t see – quick­ly enters and leaves the bathroom.

Tan­ger­ine, Baker’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, sim­i­lar­ly occu­pies two nar­ra­tive spaces. The first is the com­ic revenge quest of the two trans pro­tag­o­nists, on the hunt for a cheat­ing boyfriend’s mis­tress. This hilar­i­ous mis­sion is what dri­ves the film, invest­ing the view­er in the stakes of the task at hand. The periph­ery of the frame is used to shine a light on unrep­re­sent­ed LA spaces cen­tring trans women of colour – from a broth­el they dis­turb to kid­nap a poten­tial sus­pect, to a male cab dri­ver giv­ing a trans woman a blow job in a car wash.

None of these events are by any means ​“gazed” at – instead, they are the very fab­ric of the film, only inci­den­tal, with no arti­fi­cial spot­light. Through shift­ing the ​“hard­er” mate­r­i­al to the periph­ery of the frame, as view­ers we decen­tre our read­ing of minor­i­ty worlds as some­thing ​“trag­ic.” Instead, they are lived real­i­ties on screen as they are in real life, and we do not gawp like tourists on a ​“favela tour” (an actu­al attrac­tion in Brazil). We sim­ply expe­ri­ence them as giv­en, with the world and its pro­tag­o­nists hav­ing insid­er agency over the audience.

Anoth­er film har­ness­ing sim­i­lar strate­gies is A Ciambra, which came to the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val this year after mak­ing waves at Cannes. Direct­ed by Jonas Carpig­nano, the film thrusts us into the world of 14-year-old Pio, part of a small Romani com­mu­ni­ty in Cal­abria liv­ing in near-pover­ty. When his old­er broth­ers and father are tak­en to jail, Pio is forced to grow up fast, fill­ing the role of bread­win­ner for a fam­i­ly strug­gling to make ends meet. It’s a tough film, and the dai­ly grind of what it means to live on the out­skirts of soci­ety hit home. But once again, periph­er­al vision is deft­ly utilised by the extra­or­di­nary cin­e­matog­ra­phy of Tim Curtin.

With a hand-held approach, we are nev­er look­ing at the sub­jects of the film, but more look­ing beside them – the cam­era moves fran­ti­cal­ly with young Pio on his Ves­pa, often irre­spec­tive of where the view­er is. Details that a more anx­ious film­mak­er might have over­played – the drug tak­ing in the car, the black dirt coat­ing the feet of the lit­tle chil­dren – hap­pen in a sud­den flash, just to the edge of frame. And the use of film instead of dig­i­tal, forces us to embody the very mate­ri­al­i­ty of the place we are watch­ing; the debris and sand of the land­scape inform­ing the very tex­ture of the medi­um cap­tur­ing it.

Such film­mak­ers make empa­thy their pri­or­i­ty; we are asked to dis­pense of judge­ment, and instead to con­nect with the wants and desires of the cen­tral pro­tag­o­nists, regard­less of their cir­cum­stances. In a social cli­mate of such divi­sion­ism, invit­ing view­ers to con­nect with dis­placed iden­ti­ties in a human, uncon­de­scend­ing way, is crit­i­cal. Through plac­ing these char­ac­ters cen­tre frame – and util­is­ing the periph­ery for tex­tur­al detail – as peo­ple we’re chal­lenged to shift our self-cen­tred gaze in every­day life, and to look around with a bit more sensitivity.