By frag_editorial In 2024, I was working on a joint videographic project (now abandoned) on cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and had finally sat down to watch The Revenant. The movie fascinated me not because of the storyline but because of the extreme, vast visuals of the landscape of the American West – or at least a 21st Century vision for what it “must have been like.” This reminded me of Jeff Cutter’s similar work in Prey, another movie that considers the landscape of old-time trappers and Native Americans. This first draft effort was too tempting, too beautiful, not to put together.
About the maker
Jeffrey Romero Middents is Associate Professor of Literature at American University, where he teaches film and world literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries. He is the author of Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Cultures in Peru (University Press of New England, 2009) and has crafted numerous essays, both in written and video forms, for Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Transnational Cinemas, Short Film Studies, [in]Transition, Mediático, Teknokultura, ASAP/J, and TECMERIN. He is currently working on a manuscript on transnational Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón.
Contact
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user22835344
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/middento/
Bluesky: @middento.bsky.social