The Thinking Machine #81
21st Century Mise en scène

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.
The Eurovision Song Contest always provides a good barometer of where audiovisual culture, as a whole, is going. For there are two stagings of song-and-dance, two types of mise en scène, vying for attention at the same moment: one is theatrically organised for the gaze of the vast crowd around the stage; and the other is for the cameras (for TV & Internet) broadcasting worldwide. So there’s a live performance, and a screen performance. How does all that get organised for the eye and ear? Let’s tune in on Marina Satti’s “Zari”.