Unstructured Discourse: An Afternoon with Jean-Pierre Gorin

Catch Unstructured Discourse: An Afternoon with Jean-Pierre Gorin, a screening of Poto and Cabengo (1980) by Jean-Pierre Gorin, followed by an in-person talk by the filmmaker and a public discussion moderated by Yuka Murakami and Lukas Brasiskis.

The event begins with a screening of Poto and Cabengo, one of Gorin’s most searching works on language, listening, and the social forces through which speech is interpreted. The film follows Grace and Virginia Kennedy, twin sisters in San Diego whose private speech briefly drew the attention of linguists, therapists, journalists, and television reporters. Gorin described the film as being about “unstructured discourse”: the language of the twins as it is surrounded by the more structured discourses of family, medical institutions, and media. Rather than treating that language as a puzzle to be solved, Poto and Cabengo uses observation, interviews, and essayistic reflection to examine how different forms of authority attempt to translate and contain it. In doing so, the film becomes an inquiry into mechanisms of power of interpretation, and into cinema’s own position within that field: how can film enter a situation without pretending to master it, and remain open to uncertainty and contradiction?

Following the screening, Gorin’s talk and the public discussion with the filmmaker will take the film as a point of departure for a wider conversation on authorship, committed filmmaking, and the role cinema can play in society.