ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits John Ellis’ contention that television’s regime of vision is rooted in the glance, rather than the gaze, by exploring the virtual pandemic film festival from the perspective of a filmmaker and festival programmer. Reflecting upon these experiences, this chapter addresses the loss of the auratic or ritualistic experience of festival-going, with a replacement by “Artflixing.” The “blurry effects” of streaming relate to the impressionistic aesthetics of the pandemic, extending to the dissolution of boundaries between work and home, as well as to the erosion between arthouse and mainstream films. Despite these blurs, aesthetic boundaries are re-entrenched along lines of taste, nationalism, and race. The chapter’s provocation is that Artflixing produces an antithetical engagement to what Scott MacDonald describes as the ecocinematic experience which models patience and mindfulness. Due to competition with, and distraction by, other domesticated commercial streamers and digital devices, which often skew toward “hysteria” or “ambience,” the powerfully fragile art film can lose its delicate spell and its potential as transitional play when relocated in the home.
