Glow in the Dark: The Virtual Possibilities of Valentin Noujaïm’s Cinema | Frieze
This short piece opens Frieze Issue 250, an issue thematically dedicated to film and the moving image. I write about Valentin Noujaïm’s short fictional film, Oceania, reflecting on its subtle explorations of twentieth century world-historical events—leftist, anti-imperial, pan-Africanist struggles and the AIDS epidemic, for instance —and their spectral reverberations in a contemporary French suburb. I briefly touch on the ways Noujaïm unravels these unsettled and layered histories through a young protagonist’s emergent queer desire, his encounters with haunted archival media, and his sparse interpersonal dialogues with friends and family.
Image: Valentin Noujaïm, Oceania, 2024, film still. Courtesy: © Valentin Noujaïm; production: La Belle Affaire
