A portrait of the twenty-first century

Abstract

For spectators who allow themselves to be immersed in the enthralling audiovisual field created in Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's film Zidane, the experience suggests that what they have seen is a key work of the new century. Indeed, the film may well be presented as the portrait of a star football player, but its impact and significance extend well beyond, and will outlive, that of a conventional documentary about a now retired athlete. Zidane: un portrait du 21e siècle/Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait (2006) offers itself simultaneously as a highly sensual and deeply reflexive work, combining the visceral and moving power of the audiovisual spectacle with an exploration of the status of filmic images as historical objects embedded in a culture of mass consumerism. As such, the film exemplifies one of the most stimulating developments in both contemporary film theory and the practice of feature filmmaking: the return of the corporeal and a concomitant reappraisal of film theory's abstract tendencies through a renewed focus on the material appearance and sensory impact of film and media images and sounds.