This concern with the act of looking and with the confluence of looks that cinematic spectatorship explores, is a long-standing feature of Julien’s work in which the ‘look’ becomes the index of desire, of conflict, of mis-identification. But it must also be seen as a fundamental structuring trope of cinematic representation. Think of how ‘shot/counter-shot’ works in narrative cinema, the look from one character to another becoming the invisible spine of a scene, an expressive element as well as a basic structural tool. In Territories, for example, the ‘look’ is the incommensurable space between white law and black subject and one achieved through a montage effect, that of the superimposition, given in a repeated sequence, of shots of a policeman and a young black man. Julien’s 1996 made-for-TV documentary-essay film on Frantz Fanon’s life, times and legacy, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, is shot through with this repertoire of enigmatic looking, frequently breaking out of the conventions of easily stitched-together shot/counter-shot conventions and, through an effective combination of direct, frontal looks to-camera and glancing, ‘un-matched’ looks, converging in the territory of the spectator.
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