The Cinema of Paula Markovitch (Contested Marginality)

The Cinema of Paula Markovitch investigates the director’s explorations of differently marginalized dwellers and their sensescapes as a vital feature of her oeuvre. By inviting the viewer into the socioemotional layers of homeless sites, hospice-like spaces, assisted-suicide intersubjectivities, and political displacements, Markovitch revitalizes the complexity of the margins in novel and expansive ways. Such dynamically intertwined socioemotional and sensory engagements at and with the margins are conceptualized in the book as contested marginality. This concept refers to the complexly interpersonal and ostensibly unanticipated manifestations of agentic potential through sensory experiences in peripheric sites and circumstances. Such aesthetic considerations of the margins also bring to light fecund modes for broader sociocultural critiques in Markovitch’s films.