Playing with the feature Medusa (Méduse)

2020 / 10 min / Australia / Experimental

Directed by Cassandra Tytler
Cast: Mark Adams, Hannah Bailey, Adrian Brunato

Walter Benjamin imagines a theatrical scene where an act of family violence is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger. He uses this story concept to describe the mechanisms of epic theatre. Oops! is a literalisation of Benjamin’s concept. The look of the stranger renews the look of the viewer, shocking them into seeing a scene of impending violence anew, from the perspective of an interloper who sits outside the ideological context of the narrative.

Oops! imagines three different stories of conflict within contemporary Australia. It considers the power relations between class, race and gender that are played out in household settings and experiments with the interrupting techniques of montage as well as Benjamin’s intruding stranger.

Oops! was made with a crew of almost all women (11 out of 12 people).