Giuliana is Il Deserto Roso reduced to the face of Monica Vitti. As a supercut all scenes without her face are cut, as a supercrop Antonionis famously sumptuous set pieces and landscapes are cut as well. Facial recognition sofware guides the virtual camera as it scans the screen in a unemotional, unrelenting, precise, machine-like fashion, and thus adds a level to Giuliana’s isolation. Simultaneously this creates a new filmic space. Merely composed of her face movements it succeeds in highlighting its expressiveness.
The header image is one of hundreds of montages I made for editing the material, see also: outtakes.
Here’s roughly the first half (which equals half of the whole movie).
On display at the HGB:
facial recognition VS zombies (2012)
All of Dawn of the Dead, just the faces:
