The Many Ways to Avert One’s Eyes

"What forms of revenge are possible in a corrupted medium?" With this question, Eszter Katalin brings up a key term in her critique of film as an object and as a dispositif of viewing. Turning back, taking back: Under the sign of revenge, Katalin's questioning of the materials and representational forms of film turns into a reply to wounds suffered. The chapter titles of her essay film trace a production process that ends with image-fixing and projection – and begins with an analogy between the image as a trace of light and the act of burning something in; this analogy is hinted at in a dialogue with Inextinguishable Fire, Harun Farocki´s essay film about contradictions in conveying contexts and effects of the military use of napalm.

But isn´t revenge just another form of the "seduction to violence" which, according to Katalin´s voice-over, is articulated by film once it assumes the ruler´s pose, which foregrounds how film involves shooting? Knowing this, the filmmaker acts out her impulse towards revenge in a displaced manner: posing in an emblematic mask reminiscent of ninjas or of political terrorism, she sets out to weave a complex texture of reflections on how European biographies and film histories are entangled in politicized violence, in heterosexist, racist and colonial project(ion)s. Reflection in the flesh: Katalin reenacts film scenes (by Claire Denis and Márta Mészáros, or with super villain Irma Vep), she slips into images and masks to investigate them, to displace their fixations – by shifting languages, modes of address, image systems. Her grandmother, at once her alter ego and prosaic mask, recounts her work in a metal factory – one woman´s routinized factory gestures echo in the other´s ritual-like gestures of manufacturing film. The titular averting of one's eyes is an intrinsic counterforce to how this film discusses and illuminates the contents of images, and the enigmatic feel of revenge is a form which keeps reflection from turning into rationalization. Fascination is what rationalization would exorcise – and what in this film becomes part of its pull, one that amounts to a seduction to critique. (Drehli Robnik)