Watch: The Sensual World of Claire Denis | Little White Lies

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Watch: The Sen­su­al World of Claire Denis

15 Apr 2019

Words by Luís Azevedo

A man holding a young child in a dark room, with warm orange lighting.
A man holding a young child in a dark room, with warm orange lighting.
Fil­ter­ing the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape of this mas­ter film­mak­er through the five senses.

What is it that makes the films of Claire Denis so unique? Part of the mag­ic is that it’s near-impos­si­ble to sec­ond-guess her impuls­es as an artist. There’s an alche­my at work. She employs a for­mu­la so com­plex, that even if we uncov­ered it we like­ly wouldn’t be able to com­pre­hend it.

Yet one aspect does stand out, and that is her inter­est in using the cam­era to trans­mit tac­tile feel­ing, to stim­u­late the sens­es with her sub­lime audio visu­al offerings.

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Inspired by this obser­va­tion, video essay­ist Luís Azeve­do fil­ters her work through one of the five sens­es: touch, taste, sound, smell and sight. Wel­come to the sen­su­al world of Claire Denis.

The script for this video was part­ly extract­ed from Lit­tle White Lies 79: The High Life issue – on sale now. Watch below and sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel for more great video essays.

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