Mourning, materiality and the feminine: Sarah Pucill’s films 2004-2010
type: CreativeWork
description: The writing-up of this PhD has examined experimental films I made between 2004 and 2010, in all five 16mm films: Stages Of Mourning, (17min, 2004), Taking My Skin, (35min, 2006), Blind Light (21min, 2007), Fall In Frame (19min, 2009), Phantom Rhapsody (19min, 2010). As I have been making films that have been exhibited and funded in the public field since 1990, the films included here constitute just less than half of my total films to date. The commentary is divided into three sections, each of which analyses the films from a particular perspective. In each section the five films are considered in turn, in chronological order. The rationale for having three different perspectives to analyse each film is that this provides a means of acknowledging and preserving a sense of the alterity of artists’ film, where readings are understood more as interpretations than as explanations. The choice of focus in each section summarises key considerations that have been relevant to my filmmaking practice over this time period, if not since the start of my filmmaking in 1990. In addition to providing contextual international film artists from both avantgarde and feminist film, I also reference theorists from philosophy to film and feminist studies who have been instrumental in the rationale for the films. The first section explores the films from the point of view of cinematic space, examining factors such as camera frame, angle, lens and edit as well as qualities of lighting, and durational qualities where for example a slowing of time might expand an idea of the space. Cinematic space is as much expressed through sound, so where relevant this is also discussed. The second section focuses on qualities of texture through both image and sound. In particular, as all the films were shot and printed onto 16mm, the question of the haptic in relation to the films is discussed, as is the low-budget hand-made texture of image and sound that is the materiality of the unpolished. Vivian Sob…
abstract: The writing-up of this PhD has examined experimental films I made between 2004 and 2010, in all five 16mm films: Stages Of Mourning, (17min, 2004), Taking My Skin, (35min, 2006), Blind Light (21min, 2007), Fall In Frame (19min, 2009), Phantom Rhapsody (19min, 2010). As I have been making films that have been exhibited and funded in the public field since 1990, the films included here constitute just less than half of my total films to date. The commentary is divided into three sections, each of which analyses the films from a particular perspective. In each section the five films are considered in turn, in chronological order. The rationale for having three different perspectives to analyse each film is that this provides a means of acknowledging and preserving a sense of the alterity of artists’ film, where readings are understood more as interpretations than as explanations. The choice of focus in each section summarises key considerations that have been relevant to my filmmaking practice over this time period, if not since the start of my filmmaking in 1990. In addition to providing contextual international film artists from both avantgarde and feminist film, I also reference theorists from philosophy to film and feminist studies who have been instrumental in the rationale for the films. The first section explores the films from the point of view of cinematic space, examining factors such as camera frame, angle, lens and edit as well as qualities of lighting, and durational qualities where for example a slowing of time might expand an idea of the space. Cinematic space is as much expressed through sound, so where relevant this is also discussed. The second section focuses on qualities of texture through both image and sound. In particular, as all the films were shot and printed onto 16mm, the question of the haptic in relation to the films is discussed, as is the low-budget hand-made texture of image and sound that is the materiality of the unpolished. Vivian Sob…
author: Pucill, S.
date published: 2014
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:01:59Z
provider: University of Westminster
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Westminster

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.34737/964y8