You are here:

Tabula Rasa

Name: Tabula Rasa
Director: Peter Tscherkassky
Released: 1989
Duration: 16 min

Representation Score

0.7/10

Minimal

1989

Director

Peter Tscherkassky

Runtime

16 minutes

Average Rating

No ratings yet

New Showbiz Analysis

Tabula Rasa operates as a formalist study of film materiality rather than a narrative exploration of social identity. It prioritizes the deconstruction of the cinematic medium over the representation of specific demographic groups. While the film lacks traditional diversity metrics, it offers a postmodern critique of media structures. By attacking the film strip itself, it disrupts the viewer-object relationship through physical manipulation of celluloid rather than through character-driven storytelling.

Watch this, not that →

Category Breakdown

Does Tabula Rasa have LGBTQ+ representation?

Minimal

Since the film is an experimental short without character development or dialogue, there is no depiction of sexual orientation or gender identity.

How does Tabula Rasa portray gender?

Minimal

The film uses found footage of a woman undressing, which initially suggests the male gaze. However, violent manipulation of the film strip deconstructs this cliché, removing the subject from her role as a passive object.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Tabula Rasa?

Minimal

The work focuses on abstract manipulation and layered textures. It lacks a cast or character-driven storytelling to address racial or ethnic identity.

How does Tabula Rasa represent religion and culture?

Fair

The film functions as an anti-capitalist critique by rejecting traditional storytelling. It prioritizes the destruction of the medium over the consumption of polished, commercial products.

Does Tabula Rasa include disability representation?

Minimal

There are no characters or depictions of neurodivergence or physical disability. The work remains strictly within the realm of abstract, structuralist cinema.

Present on Screen

Challenges traditional voyeuristic hierarchies by physically attacking the cinematic medium.
Provides a postmodern critique of the cinematic image as a commercial commodity.
Deconstructs the 'male gaze' through the violent manipulation of found footage.

Limited or Absent

Lacks any demographic representation or character-driven storytelling.
Does not address racial, ethnic, or LGBTQ+ identities due to its abstract nature.
Provides no depiction of neurodivergence or physical disability.

Official Synopsis

The target of Tabula Rasa is the heart of cinema. Voyeuristic desire as the pre-condition for all cinema pleasure is at stake here. What Christian Metz and Jacques Lacan have established in theory is rendered as film in Tabula Rasa. At the beginning we can recognize only shadows from which the picture of a woman undressing herself hesitantly emerges. But exactly at the point when one believes one can make out what it is, the camera is located in front of the object. Tabula Rasa takes distance, the fundamental principle of voyeurism, in so far literally, as it shows us the object of desire but continually removes it from our gaze.

How are these scores produced? →