How can dubbing bring Bergman’s heroines closer to a Soviet bakery worker? Is cinema possible without images? How can a children’s retelling change the perception of Méliès’s cinematography? In the third installment of the «How We Watch» series for Session magazine, Maxim Seleznev continues to discuss video-essayistic practices using the work of students from the HSE Art and Design School as examples.
«Distortion of the Viewer’s Experience Through Translation» (Alena Popova)
Alena Popova’s video essay discusses the difficulties of translation—how texts inevitably lose something when crossing linguistic borders. In cinema, a medium that is predominantly visual, this situation is further complicated. This is not only due to the varying methods and qualities of translation but also because of voiceover options—whether single-voice or dubbed, professional or amateur, and recorded on equipment of differing quality and under various conditions. Consequently, the same film appears in numerous variations. In this context, Popova recalls Hito Steyerl’s text, «The Politics of the Archive,» which has become a classic. This piece focuses on the different versions of the Yugoslavian film «Battle of Neretva» over time—those produced through dubbing, edits, and releases on various media, where the image quality sometimes changed, and sometimes even the frame format itself.
«Counter-visual Cinema» (Inna Durneva)
In her essay «Countervisual Cinema, ” Inna Durneva discusses another, even more radical, viewing practice, noting the growing tendency among today’s audiences not to watch, but rather to listen to films. Some divert their attention from the cinema screen to check their phone display; others drift away to attend to everyday matters; and some intentionally close their eyes, falling asleep to the film’s soundtrack.
«A Trip to the Moon» Through a Child’s Eyes (Ulyana Lavor)
In another deliberate contrast is Ulyana Lavor’s video essay. The essay juxtaposes two voices discussing the same film: Georges Méliès’ classic «A Trip to the Moon.» The first—strict and measured—belongs to a neutral narrator, reciting either an expanded synopsis or a dry encyclopedic entry. The second—less cohesive and assured, but far more energetic—is the voice of the essayist’s 10-year-old brother, reacting to his first encounter with Méliès. Where one voice delivers the standard line, «this film laid the foundation for the tradition of science fiction in cinema, ” the other offers a naive speculation: „Mmm, I don’t think anyone has ever seen it.“
Read the full version of the text on the Seance magazine website: https://seance.ru/articles/o-trudnostyah-videoperevoda/