Fwd from the Frameworks email forum:

From:    konrad <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: tentative review: She Puppet

She Puppet is a video by Peggy Ahwesh that uses as it's
imagery exclusively scenes from a video game of Lara Croft
Tomb Raider.  I don't know much about the game, or even if
there are versions, so there may be more details than that.
The tape has been out for a while and on the festival
circuit.  Ed Halter wrote some remarks about this
mischevious work at:

http://www.indiewire.com/film/festivals/fes_01NYVideoFest_010716.html

The tape (on one level) is very simply constructed, although
dense with language at times, and full of a delicately
layered soundtrack including sound effects from the game and
suggestive strains of music and other environmental noises.
I don't have the credits or text at hand unfortunately, so i
can only record my first impressions.

The scenes shift from the hero character in various
scenarios:  Egyptian tombs, industrial factories, desert
caves and lush pools and gardens.  There are only a few on
screen deaths that occur, and they mostly are dispensed with
early on in the tape.  It's hard to tell, not having played
that game, what is controlled by Ahwesh and what not, but it
appears that she has dubbed these existential moments,
gasps, and scenes that make up a small percentage of a what
is otherwise probably pretty violent and action oriented.
It seems to be made from moments within the game where
"nothing is happening."  The texts are actually very rich
and it is difficult to let them seep in on one viewing, but
they reinforce a sense of existential quandry:  what is this
wasp-waisted, buxom, cube fisted character doing (stuck)
here?  Ahwesh has taken out the structuring gestures of the
game which are presumably to attack, sieze and kill,
left in all these moments that were not conditioned with
meaning in the game, and put them *next to* texts which
induce a sense of meaning or at least a search for it.

It begins with her cold simulated breath clouding in a
moment of repose, then her shooting her way through a bunch
of enemies, then immediately going though at least a dozen
death versions in rapid succesion. At various points She
Puppet is either being attacked by men, dogs, and tigers,
participating in a solitary triathlon through a labyrinth of
scene changes, or trying to force some kind of interaction
with apparently benign He-Men, who while protecting her from
an evil MP, ignore her admittedly 'low-res' seductive
confrontations.  Of course all with no voice, but plenty of
gasps, grunts and footfalls and a voiceover unrelated to the
action.  There is one moment when the she seems to really
lose it and just starts unloading her entire arsenal at
nothing. Another where she lets herself be mauled and
cornered by hawks.  Obviously she's a complex woman. Or is
it the puppet master?  Or the programmer?

I don't really have a take on the Big Meaning of the tape at
this point, since i've only seen it once, but i just wanted
to post a 'review' of sorts so that people could be on the
lookout for it (or order it themselves).  The texts are very
complex and in themselves would need a few viewings.


konrad

^Z