Film
Vertical Roll
- Strange
- Relentless
Joan Jonas's landmark 1972 video art work interrogates the male gaze and female identity through performance and electronic distortion. Shot in real-time, her body fragments across a cascading vertical roll, the technical glitch becoming the point: a visual metaphor for how women are fractured by surveillance and imposed roles. Essential viewing for anyone curious about video art's origins or the intersection of feminism and technology.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you are drawn to video art that treats the screen itself as a subject, where the flicker and tearing of the image carry as much meaning as the performer in front of it.
Skip it if you want a story with a plot or characters you can settle into, since this is a short, deliberately abrasive experiment where the rolling picture stays the main event.
What it asks of you: The running time is short, but it wants close, unbroken attention, as the picture tears downward while one performer keeps shifting costume and role.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Wavelength1967
Michael Snow's forty-five-minute single-shot meditation on perception and film itself. A camera slowly zooms toward a photograph across a loft while light, sound, and colour shift. Like Vertical Roll, it makes you aware of the apparatus watching you.
But Glacial pacing and abstract formal concerns will feel impenetrable if you expect narrative. The 'action' is almost imperceptible.
Performance.1970
Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's hallucinogenic thriller about identity, performance, and the dissolving self. Mick Jagger embodies an androgynous rock star; the film itself warps and repeats like Jonas's vertical roll warps the body.
But Deliberately obscure, slow, and concerned more with mood and fragmentation than plot coherence. Some will find it pretentious or impenetrable.
News from Home1976
Chantal Akerman's avant-garde film reads her mother's letters aloud over static shots of New York streets. Like Jonas, Akerman uses the apparatus—here, voice and image deliberately separated—to examine presence and absence, watching and being watched.
But No conventional narrative, difficult pacing, and Akerman's minimalism requires active engagement from the viewer.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Vertical Roll
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Meshes of the Afternoon1943
Both use the female body and cinema/video apparatus to examine fractured identity and the act of being watched; Deren's film is the philosophical and technical ancestor of Jonas's video work, showing that the questions Jonas asks were already alive in cinema decades before video made them visible.
Maya Deren's groundbreaking surrealist short predates Vertical Roll by nearly three decades but arrives at similar territory: a woman performs multiple identities in fragmented, looped sequences. The camera gazes, repetition fragments the self, and the viewer is implicated in watching. Essential precursor to everything Jonas does.
But Shot in black-and-white on 16mm with a dreamlike, non-linear logic; abstract Surrealist aesthetics feel remote to viewers accustomed to narrative cinema.
More like this (2)
Thriller1979
Ulrike Ottinger's mesmerizing, surreal film about a woman's fragmented journey through a dreamlike world. The fragmentation and non-linear structure echo Jonas's formal concerns, while exploring female experience in cinema.
But Experimental narrative structure and visual abstraction make it challenging to follow; not rewarding if you're seeking clear storytelling.
Jennifer: A Woman’s Story1979
Lis Rhodes creates a structural film that explores memory, identity, and how women are represented through light and form. The distortion of the image itself becomes the subject, much like Jonas's vertical roll.
But Extremely abstract formal experimentation; minimal plot or figuration means it requires patience and openness to pure visual language.
People
Cast
Joan JonasOrganic Honey
Directing
- Joan JonasDirector