Bibliographic record
Abstract
Distributed by Film MovementProduced by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva OelbaumDirected by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum2023, Streaming, 90 mins Obsessed with Light, directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, offers a vivid and rigorously researched portrait of Loïe Fuller, the turn-of-the-century performer whose innovations in light, fabric, and stage design transformed modern dance and visual culture. Too often dismissed in her own lifetime as a novelty act, Fuller’s groundbreaking work with movement and stage technology is here restored as a foundation for contemporary performance, fashion, and even popular culture. The film’s strengths are clear. Its extensive archival research is extraordinary, providing an unparalleled visual record of Fuller’s influence. The narration, voiced by Cherry Jones, grounds Fuller’s own words in a way that conveys her determination and her artistry. Equally strong are the interviews with choreographers, designers, and artists who trace Fuller’s creative life into the present, sharing compelling evidence of her ongoing impact. The editing balances these voices with archival material to build a narrative that feels both scholarly and alive. If the program has a weakness, it is its sheer density. My only reservation is its density risks overwhelming viewers, creating a sense of information overload that may challenge less specialized audiences. Still, for academic use, this rigor is a strength rather than a flaw. For classroom and library use, Obsessed with Light is particularly valuable. Its interdisciplinary scope spans dance, theater, film history, visual art, fashion, and gender studies, which makes it a strong fit across a wide range of curricula. The program resonates especially in courses examining artistic authorship, stagecraft, and women’s contributions to cultural history. Awards:DOC NYC, 2023 Nominee Grand Jury Prize; Cleveland International Film Festival, 2024 Nominee Ad Hoc Docs Competition
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.016 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".