Richard , thank you for the suggestion of Nathaniel Dorsky.
Nathan, I would think of Nostalghia, like all of Tarkovsky's films, as a
narrative film, a work belonging to the art of fiction. Philosophical
certainly, but not primarily Philosophy.
I also think many apparently non-narrative experimental works are works of
graphic art or of graphic poetics rather than primarily philosophy. Again
philosophical but not Philosophy either primarily or explicitly. They are
also usually somewhat narrative - but it is very hard, perhaps impossible,
for the moving image of the cinematic proposition to avoid its narrative
constitution. They cannot help but signify events.
I know these thoughts revolve around what philosophy in film might be, what
doing philosophy is, what the nature of the distinction is between art and
philosophy, whether philosophy conceptualisation must be explicit or whether
its content may be suggestive, ambiguous or implied. I also think these
thoughts revolve about the nature of film. What is explicit in film? Is a
shot a proposition? How may a sequence of shots argue theoretically rather
than as narrative? Is there film diegesis and thesis as well as mimesis?
I realise these are academic questions. What is to be done is to make films
to answer them.
Ross
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