If one talks about whether it is possible to film a thought, it does seem possible, as Rey Chow argues in her "Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema" published under Columbia University Press(1995). There was that notable chapter talking about the Chinese distinction between "xu"(emptiness--external appearance or form) and "shi" (substance--internal content) in which she studies Zhang Yimou's films and posits that his films can be "shi" by virtue of the image. What I find pretty much a deconstructive thrust in her argument is that since the image is often considered to be pure semblance and surface, how can it then be internal meaning? Rey Chow is making that move of collapsing the two elements of 'inner' and 'outer' into one big entity--the film, and especially the film of Zhang Yimou.
Kevin
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