Iverson White

On the weekend of October 5, I took the opportunity to view a screening of Iverson White's most recent short film, "Self Determination". In many ways this film is can be seen to be at the forefront of a paradigm shift in experimental film. The film itself was a character study of a woman driven to the verge of alcoholism as a result of her husband's implied infidelity. Most of the film was driven by acting rather than dialogue, a stylistic choice of the director. This affected the film's structure, leaving the plot open to the abstract interpretation of the audience.

On the topic of performance I feel that this film in many ways transcends Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep”; in the sense that the audience is left to interpret an open ending. Thus the audience themselves take a more active role during the film through their own subjective "spectrum of interpretation". By this I mean the audience’s ability to analyze any art piece, and filter the meaning behind it based on their own preconceived set of morals or experiences. This brings to the piece something that was originally absent: the audiences’ interpretation of the artist’s intention. The audience in a sense becomes a prism through which the art must pass, refracting into an infinite array of possible interpretations, all of which are at the disposal of the viewer’s inherent personality.

The audience is left with to toy with their own ego to determine the outcome of the situation. This active invocation of the audience assumes the audience is not only comprehensive, but can also derive from the film the artist’s original intention. The only aspects of the film that fall into risk would be the misinterpretation of the film, and losing the artist’s intention through translation. In the same way that Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” evinces an emotional investment within the audience, so to does “Self-Determination”.