2.1. The video essay as a counter-archive for affirmative aging

In “The Wrinkle of Film,” a supercut I made primarily as a teaching resource for a class on aging in Iberian and Latin American cinemas in 2019, I expose the conventions of mainstream visual cultures in representing old age—in the infrequent instances when old age is actually depicted—while also illuminating less conventional portrayals that provide an alternative to the dominant ageist discourse. I chose the supercut because it proves to be an effective method to extract, discern, and produce deep patterns throughout film and media texts, as Allison de Fren and others have convincingly argued (de Fren 2020, Garwood 2020, Tohline 2021, and Peirse in this issue, among others).

“The Wrinkle of Film” is structured around three distinct parts. The first two segments—two “critical” supercuts (using de Fren’s term)—assemble images of aging as “decline” and “success.” By leveraging the repetitive and accumulative database logic of the supercut, these segments expose the grotesque distortions rendered invisible by the hegemonic narratives of old age. The last part—what de Fren might describe as a “celebratory” supercut—serves as a counterpoint, presenting images that challenge conventional portrayals of aging by embracing the materiality of the old body and moving beyond youth-centric views. In questioning narratives that naturalize neoliberal conceptions of productivity, independence, pleasure, and beauty, this last segment marks my initial effort as a video essayist to explore a discourse of affirmative aging.

In this context, the video essay functions as what I have called somewhere else a “practice-based counter-archive” namely, a feminist archive that generates counterhegemonic frameworks that challenge and subvert the (ageist) status quo (Zecchi 2023).

This special issue of [in]Transition serves as a significant counter-archive of affirmative old age, assembling materials of, on, and about affirmative old age excluded from the official archives. Alison Peirse’s brilliant contribution, “Knit One, Stab Two,” plays a crucial role in expanding it, foregrounding female characters whom “you have been culturally conditioned not to be interested in: the aging woman, the background character, and the person who watches the protagonist but never plays the protagonist.” Thanks to Peirse’s intervention, these seemingly insignificant figures step out of the shadows and take center stage, gaining agency and significance in the process. Moreover, Peirse extends her practice to her list of references, where she credits, rather than the male director, the most senior woman in production roles—rarely acknowledged in formal filmographies—thereby contributing to a feminist citational practice. Joining Peirse’s women in the counter-archive of this special issue are figures rescued by Colleen Laird’s captivating work. These include Tazuko Sakane, the first woman director of Japanese cinema, and the “helpful librarian at the Tokyo Metropolitan Library” who informed Laird of Sakane’s existence when she was completely ignored. Laird’s piece also brings attention to numerous films by Kinuyo Tanaka—the focus of her video essay—which are featured on the Japanese Wikipedia but absent from the US version. Libertad Gills also participates in this counter-archive by showcasing the rarely acknowledged role of Barbara Steele as an associate producer. In turn, Sadia Shepard makes Barbara Loden’s unrealized second film visible and palpable through her video essay, giving form, and a presence, to a project that was never produced.

This counter-archive is also filled with emotions that women, particularly those of a “certain age,” are not traditionally permitted to express. Libertad Gills allows Barbara Steele to have her revenge, letting her finally speak for herself—an uncommon occurrence, as her voice was often dubbed in films. When we finally hear Steele distancing herself from the on-screen persona that others have constructed for her, her rage becomes palpable. The anger conveyed in Nilanjana Bhattacharjya’s supercut is even louder. The source media object, the Netflix series Mai: A Mother’s Rage is already steeped in violence. By contrasting the mother’s violent actions with the rigid norms and expectations imposed by India’s repressive norms against women, by stripping away any justification for her acts tied to motherhood, and by presenting scenes of violence relentlessly, with virtually no respite, Bhattacharjya’s supercut becomes a powerful portrayal of an older middle-class woman reclaiming her right to rage—not as a reaction to personal loss, but as a broader protest against the systemic oppression of middle-class women in contemporary India.

2.2. Touching the media object: the video essay as a feminist palimpsest

In “Age and Horror: A Feminist Palimpsest” (Zecchi 2024), a video essay created for the recent “Women and Horror” conference at Carlos III University of Madrid, I employ techniques of masking and superimposition to render visible and materialize what is concealed beneath the hegemonic imaginary of old age and its naturalization process. The effect of these techniques is not intended to be disorienting—as is often the case with other video essays utilizing superimposition (e.g., Stephen Broomer’s “The Stairwell” or Alan O’Leary’s “Men Shouting”)—but rather to reveal and expose. In this sense, the superimpositions in my video essay function as layers of a palimpsest—a surface that has been inscribed, erased, and overwritten, with remnants of the original text faintly visible beneath. These techniques serve a dual purpose: they peel away layers of images to expose elements obscured by naturalized gerontophobic conceptions, or they overlay new images to cover and dismantle ageist representations, thereby introducing a new narrative that displaces the dominant one.

“Age and Horror: A Feminist Palimpsest” draws inspiration from a sequence in Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse, that was also the starting point for my more personal video essay “Hands Stacking.” The French filmmaker looks at some postcards, and while holding her camara with her right hand, with her left hand covers a Rembrandt self-portrait—one that, as Imma Merino (2019) has pointed out, reused a canvas on which he had previously painted the image of a woman. While the director’s lens glides into an extreme close-up of the mysterious intricacies of her wrinkled skin, she reflects on her “project” of confronting the unsettling reality of aging, expressing feelings of unfamiliarity, estrangement, and fascination. Varda’s project is the result of a process of superimposition: a young man (the painter, the author) painted his image over that of a woman, thereby covering and erasing her presence. This young man’s image, in turn, is covered and overwritten by a new layer: the hand of the aging filmmaker (the new—old—author). Through this superimposition, Varda counters the dominance of male youth, a symbol of the prevailing epistemology, by replacing it with a new, “old” mode of thinking—a novel form of cinematic thought. The tactile nature of this process—the physical act of one hand covering an image—underscores the undeniable materiality of Varda’s approach, highlighting a haptic and embodied challenge to traditional representations.

In my video essay, I employ a similar technique of haptic superimposition by both “covering” and “uncovering” one of the most iconic representations of ageism: the sequence set in the green bathroom of Room 237 in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), which focuses on the quintessential image of the abject—the older woman’s body. I reveal its influences—Le Manoir du diable (Georges Méliès, 1896), the first horror film, in which male fear and revulsion are condensed into the kiss of an older witch who has metamorphosed from a young, alluring woman. As Eva Álvarez-Vázquez (2023) has argued, horror cinema offers a crucial platform for older female actors, as it frequently reflects and amplifies anxieties about aging and because it holds a distinctively marginal position within mainstream cultural hierarchies. This genre’s focus on themes of fear and decay allows for the increased visibility of older women, who are often cast in roles that embody these very fears. However, the problem persists: How substantive and empowering is this visibility? Can it be sustained and transformed by overlaying it with diverse, more affirming representations? To address these questions, I superimpose footage from various other films onto Kubrick’s scene. This includes male-directed works that perpetuate and exacerbate fears surrounding old age through stark contrasts with youth, as well as, conversely, films by women directors that celebrate the beauty of aging bodies and depict older and younger women as interconnected rather than antagonistic opposites, in line with Adrienne Rich’s concept of the “lesbian continuum” (1980).

My video essay is dense with haptic references, particularly through the recurring imagery of Kubrick’s scene where a trembling male hand pushes open a door to confront the terror of old age. This fear is contrasted by the fearless gesture of my own hand displacing it. This emphasis on tactility aims to evoke Catherine Grant’s concept of material thinking, which involves a form of understanding that arises from engaging with sensory organs—hands, eyes, and ears—in the act of working with physical materials. Jennifer Bean (2024) has elucidated how “feeling” relates to the physical act of touching. In this context, due to their rich plasticity and engagement with materiality, several works in this special issue can be seen as contributing to the notion of the video essay as a palimpsest. For instance, in “彼岸花/Equinox Flower (Warr’s Constraint),” Colleen Laird keeps her media objects embedded within their original platforms, thus pointing to invisible strata that add palpable depth to her sophisticated mixing, coloring, and flipping of images. Libertad Gills’s whispered voice-over enveloping a close-up of Barbara Steele’s face adds a striking acoustic layer of intimacy and protection. Rose Steptoe’s crumpling of film clips, rustling paper, visible image distortions, and subtle shifts in the film’s surface contribute to a tangible experience that expose the underlying ageist construction of which the female actors are no longer victims but survivors. Dayna McLeod’s onscreen transcription of key dialogues onto sticky notes conveys that these lines are deeply memorable and personally significant, as if they were superimposed on her memory. And Nilanjana Bhattacharjya’s text overlay suggests that ancient gender roles remain inscribed on the aging woman’s body.

In a twist of tone, “Age and Horror: A Feminist Palimpsest” concludes with a humorous touch: I overlay myself into the images of Kubrick’s film, appearing as another (older) woman in Room 237’s bathtub. This playful insertion not only disrupts the serious tone but also engages with broader discussions on feminist humor and its scholarly implications. In a similar fashion, but with much greater talent, Dayna McLeod inserts herself in her video essays to introduce new layers of meaning that challenge the dominant reading of Desert Heart. Her gesture stands as a testament to her ability to use humor as a legitimate and potent scholarly tool, as Catherine Grant argues in her review. The feminist reclamation of laughter as a subversive act—as a layer superimposed over the heteropatriarchal constructs of seriousness and the traditional representation of women as mysterious or threatening—draws on feminist thinkers such as Adriana Cavarero (2009), Kathleen Rowe (1995), or more recently Maggie Hennefeld (2017). Laughter becomes a powerful tool for women to challenge and subvert heteropatriarchal power, undermine male fears, and assert their agency. As Hélène Cixous remarked in her seminal text fifty years ago, Medusa “is beautiful and she’s laughing” (1976, 893). Notably, in many iconographies, Medusa inhabits the body of an older woman.

2.3. Reframing Vision: Aging, Empathy, and the Politics of Blur

My first monograph Desenfocadas (Women Filmmakers Out of Focus, 2014) gave visibility to the work of four generations of female filmmakers in Spain, whose contributions behind the camera had been systematically blurred by the hegemonic narrative of cinema history. My book also addressed the persistent stereotypes in mainstream visual cultures that have consistently marginalized and kept women out of focus. At the time of writing, however, I had not considered another way to look at the blur—one that reflects the changes in vision associated with aging—perhaps because, ten years ago, I still enjoyed perfect eyesight. I now propose that this form of perception, unlike the blur I criticized in my first book, suggests a way of seeing (and, by extension, of feeling and thinking) that subverts the hegemonic gaze of visual cultures—what Kathleen Woodward has termed “the youthful structure of the look” (1989). In this context, the sharply defined images presented by dominant film and media narratives are, paradoxically, more misleading—allowing viewers to see less—than the blurred ones.

Once again, the inspiration for this third video essay comes from Agnès Varda. In Visages Villages, the French filmmaker juxtaposes Buñuel and Dalí’s iconic opening scene from Un Chien Andalou (1929)—the infamous razor slicing through an eye—with a shot of her own cornea being pierced by a needle during an intravitreal injection. To further reveal not just what she sees, but also how she sees it, Varda constructs a giant human eye chart by arranging actors on steps, each holding cardboard letters. She then transitions to a subjective shot of the same scene, but with blurred images and oscillating rows of letters. If Buñuel and Dalí, with the opening sequence of their film, established a new way of looking shaped by gender—let’s not forget that the victim of the razor blade is a woman’s eye, aligning with the avant-garde’s glorification of virility—nearly 90 years later, Varda inaugurates a gaze defined by age and age-related “maladie des yeux”—a vision that, according to her words, is blurred but grants her happiness.

The seminal video essay “In Praise of Blur” by Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet—which I must admit I was unaware of when producing my video essay on presbyoempathic visuality—aimed, according to its creators, “to free our chosen images from having to do any of the narrative, emotional, or symbolic work that they were filmed to do. We wanted to override the uses of blur in order to look at the qualities of blur, and so allow our chosen images to be experienced as light, colour, and texture” (2017). My approach diverges significantly from this perspective.

Mainstream cinema and media reproduce, with clear consistency, a “normal” or “neutral angle”—a standard height perspective associated with a realist (naturalized, invisible) gaze that feminist film theory has scrutinized since the 1970s. This perspective, characterized by a lack of camera tilt and a wide depth of field, corresponds to someone of average height and good visual acuity—typically a medium-height young man. In Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Chantal Akerman notably subverts this viewpoint by lowering the camera perspective to align with that of a petite woman like herself, thereby revealing “a female ordering of that space,” as B. Ruby Rich has pointed out (1978). Similarly, in Villages and Visages, Agnès Varda presents a blurred way of seeing that contrasts with mainstream visual sharpness and the default youth-centric perspective. This approach aligns with the concept of “disability aesthetics” (Siebers 2010). Varda’s unconventional way of seeing challenges and expands normative visual paradigms, thereby participating “in a system of knowledge that provides materials for and increases critical consciousness about the way that some bodies make other bodies feel” (Siebers 2010, 20).

In this 2019 video essay, I proposed the neologism “presbyoempathic” to describe a visuality shaped to age-related changes in vision. This term combines “empathic” with “presbyo,” from the Ancient Greek πρέσβυς (présbus, “old man”) and ὤψ (ṓps, “eye”)—as seen in “presbyopia” a common eye condition that occurs as people age. “Presbyoempathic” denotes a perspective of empathy associated with aging or towards aging, but also, more radically, a way to define an alternative to the hegemonic “youthful structure of the look.” Such a blur brings into focus (paradoxically) what traditional culture has put out of focus. The blur is both literal and metaphorical. It represents both a concrete simulation of blurred vision and a metaphorical evocation, serving as an affective and political strategy aligned with the materialist theory of becoming (Braidotti 2002). In this context, Agnès Varda’s statement, “I see blurry, and I am happy,” underscores a distinct mode of perception that embraces pleasure in non-traditional visual experiences. Varda revitalizes scopophilia—the pleasure of looking—not as voyeurism or narcissism but as a form of empathy that contrasts with the dominant, youth-centric perspective. This imperfect vision, while lacking in conventional clarity, paradoxically endows her with a unique, immanent form of “seeing.”

The video essays in this special issue participate in the presbyoempathic visuality through an exciting array of techniques: I can see it in Alison Peirse’s soft pixelation of magnified images; in Rose Steptoe’s manipulation of the films’ relationships to time and duration; in Colleen Laird’s enigmatic exploration of “the presence of an absence”; in Libertad Gills’s blurred, gritty videotape look of her “videographic revenge”; in Sadia Quraeshi Shepard’s raw, unpolished granularity of Loden’s material; in Dayna McLeod’s alternation of fast-forward motion with normal speed replay; in Nam Lee’s multiscreen of blurred images of older people; and finally in Nilanjana Bhattacharjya’s subtle opacity of the text inscribed onto the body of a middle-age woman. I find enormous pleasure in these diverse, fascinating visual experiences, as they collectively help me to feel and understand beyond what is immediately visible.

In conclusion, these video essays go further than simply challenging ageist assumptions or disrupting gerontophobic narratives embedded within visual cultures. Whether rescuing overlooked voices as a counter-archive, revealing hidden dimensions of age constructions through a feminist palimpsest, or offering new, affective, and affirmative ways of seeing old age, these works are a testament to the video essay’s potential to foster new conversations within aging studies. These video essays offer a perceptual engagement that allows the experience of old age to be not only understood but also felt—visually, aurally, haptically, and emotionally. And to be enjoyed.