I would categorize this video as a "structural film." I just recently learned about this type of genre in my video art class. Structural film can be defined as fixed or stable shots, archival footages combined with texts that challenges a conventional form of narration. The text or voice over should challenge what is represented in images, or give a whole new perspective to the images shown. We Began by Measuring the Distance utilizes archival footage and long still frames in contrast with text/language and sound. However, their shots weave into the dialogue, commenting on the ideas of measurement and political turmoil. The narrator speaks of literal measurements, which may seem insignificant. It was difficult for me to understand their significance, but by the end, I felt that these measurements helped them tell their story and promote a feeling of being trapped. My favorite part in the film was when the words on the screen matched with the image of the two individuals holding the sheet. I would like to learn how to edit text within a film in a way that compliments the film itself.
Visualized Authority
Visuality is a specific technique of colonial and imperial practice, operating both at 'home' and 'abroad,' by which power visualizes History to itself. In doing so, it claims authority, above and beyond its ability to impose its will...Visualization demonstrates authority, which produces consent...Visuality is thus a regime of visualizations, not images, as conjured by the autocratic leader...Critical Visuality Studies claims the right to look at that which authority wishes to conceal.
Here lies the contradictory source of the resonance of ‘visuality’ as a keyword for visual culture as both a mode of representing imperial culture and a means of resisting it by means of reverse appropriation.