Your History with Me

The Films of Penny Siopis

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Edited by Sarah Nuttall

Type

Film Reviews

Subject

Genre > Experimental

Keywords

arts, Penny Siopis, South Africa

Publishing date

2024

Publisher

Duke University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 504 pages
8 ¾ x 7 inches (22 x 17.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4780-3043-0

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Book Presentation:
Penny Siopis is internationally acclaimed for her pathbreaking paintings and installations. Your History with Me is a comprehensive study of her short films, which have put her at the front ranks of contemporary artist-filmmakers. Siopis uses found footage to create short video essays that function as densely encrypted accounts of historical time and memory that touch on the cryptic and visceral elements of gender and power. The critics, scholars, curators, artists, and filmmakers in this volume examine her films in relation to subjects ranging from the history of Greeks in South Africa, trauma and cultural memory, and her relationship with the French New Wave to her feminist-inflected articulations of form and content and how her films comment on apartheid. They also highlight her global South perspective to articulate a mode of filmmaking highly responsive to histories of violence, displacement, and migration as well as pleasure, joy, and renewal. The essays, which are paired with vivid stills from Siopis's films throughout, collectively widen the understanding of Siopis's oeuvre. Opening new vocabularies of thought for engaging with her films, this volume outlines how her work remakes the possibilities of film as a mode of experimentation and intervention.

Contributors. John Akomfrah, Sinazo Chiya, Mark Gevisser, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Katerina Gregos, Brenda Hollweg, William Kentridge, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall, Griselda Pollock, Laura Rascaroli, Zineb Sedira, Penny Siopis, Hedley Twidle, Zo Whitley.

About the Author:
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, editor of Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics and coeditor of Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, both also published by Duke University Press, and author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Postapartheid.

Press Reviews:
"Nobody but Sarah Nuttall could have put together such a stellar collection to make the unanswerable case for filmmaker Penny Siopis as an artist of unique aesthetic and social significance. Forged in the political fires of South Africa, Siopis’s ravishing, demanding films resonate across the global landscape. This will be a must-read anthology for anyone interested in how artistic practice can help create a path away from cruelty toward a world of freedom and justice." - Jacqueline Rose, author of The Plague: Living Death in Our Times

See the publisher website: Duke University Press