Postures et mutations du plan-séquence fixe, du cinéma des premiers temps à YouTube
Favouring an approach at once genealogical and intertextual, this study explores the practice of the "static sequence shot" (plan-séquence caméra fixe) in cinema. It offers an overview of its significant moments in film history. It tries to show how its use since the 70's can be seen as a reappraisal of early cinema technique, and can also find strong echos in the works of experimental filmmakers, in particular structural filmmaking. For Andy Warhol, the static sequence shot was both a rediscovery and an enchantment of early cinema. In Jeanne Dielman Chantal Akerman's static shots extended Bazinian Modernism into the New York Avant-garde. Since the 80's, with the advent of video surveillance, the static sequence shot becomes associated with a carceral apparatus, posing ethical and aesthetic issues (voyeurism, degree zero mechanisms, etc.). These issues are at the core of the documentary films News from Home and Délits flagrants. Today, we can witness that the static sequence shot has become increasingly important and almost dominant in certain branches of auteur cinema as well as in contemporary popular media culture (web films, T.V. series, etc.) This master's thesis thus claims it allows us to analyse current as well as early practices of cinema, from the Lumière' s factory to YouTube.
Andy Warhol Jeanne Dielman Static sequence shot Experimental cinema Structural film Film aesthetic Early cinema video surveillance