BookFrontier
Reframing Bodies by Roger Hallas

Book

Reframing Bodies

AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image

Roger Hallas

Duke University Press · Print & ebook · December 2, 2009

Reading lane: AIDS & HIV

In Reframing Bodies , Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis.

Buy on AmazonBrowse Lists

Disclosure: Some outbound links are affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission. It doesn't affect which books we include. Learn more in our disclosure policy.

At a Glance

Who It's For

Reading lane: Aids & Hiv and Hiv & Aids.Publisher: Duke University Press.

Book Details

Authors
Roger Hallas
Publisher
Duke University Press
Published
December 2, 2009
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
AIDS & HIV · HIV & AIDS
Reading lane
AIDS & HIV

Affinity

Publisher Categories

  • AIDS & HIV

  • Film History & Criticism

  • Gay Studies

About This Book

In Reframing Bodies , Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis. He explains how queer films and videos made in response to the AIDS epidemics in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa challenge longstanding assumptions about both historical trauma and the politics of gay visibility. Drawing on a wide range of works, including activist tapes, found footage...

Read full description

In Reframing Bodies , Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis. He explains how queer films and videos made in response to the AIDS epidemics in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa challenge longstanding assumptions about both historical trauma and the politics of gay visibility. Drawing on a wide range of works, including activist tapes, found footage films, autobiographical videos, documentary portraits, museum installations, and even film musicals, Hallas reveals how such “queer AIDS media” simultaneously express both immediacy and historical consciousness. Queer AIDS media are neither mere ideological critiques of the dominant media representation of homosexuality and AIDS nor corrective attempts to produce “positive images” of people living with HIV/AIDS. Rather, they perform complex, mediated acts of bearing witness to the individual and collective trauma of AIDS. Challenging the entrenched media politics of who gets to speak, how, and to whom, Hallas offers a bold reconsideration of the intersubjective relations that connect filmmakers, subjects, and viewers. He explains how queer testimony reframes AIDS witnesses and their speech through its striking combination of direct address and aesthetic experimentation. In addition, Hallas engages recent historical changes and media transformations that have not only displaced queer AIDS media from activism to the archive, but also created new witnessing dynamics through the logics of the database and the remix. Reframing Bodies provides new insight into the work of Gregg Bordowitz, John Greyson, Derek Jarman, Matthias Müller, and Marlon Riggs, and offers critical consideration of important but often overlooked filmmakers, including Jim Hubbard, Jack Lewis, and Stuart Marshall.

Similar Books