I appreciate this post. I have one question, however, about your own
restriction of film to 'moving images'. This view accords well with our
immediate intuitions and most theoretical accounts, but appears subject to
counter-examples. As Noel Carroll has recently pointed out in response to
Gregory Currie's endorsement of the 'moving image' concept of film, there
are films whose images do not move (Carroll's article, 'The Essence of
Cinema?', is in response to Currie's book, _Image and Mind: Film,
Philosophy and Cognitive Science_, and appears in _Philosophical Studies_
89: 323-330, 1998). Carroll lists the following examples, among others,
noting that all are films 'in the sense that they were constructed and
disseminated by means of standard film apparatuses':
'Oshima's _Band of Ninjas_ (a film of a comic strip); Michael Snow's _One
Second in Montreal_ (a film of photos); Hillis Frampton's _Poetic Justice_
(a film of a tabletop on which we see pages of a shooting script); and
Godard and Gorin's infamous _Letter to Jane_ (another film of photos)' (327).
Any response?
Jeff
At 06:09 PM 1/5/99 +0100, you wrote:
>You raised an important question - what the word "film" in "film-philosophy
>list" referes to? The question is mostly evaded, assumed to be clear, or
>just provisionaly dealt with, not only in "film-philosophy list", but in
>most of the film literature.
>
>Most of the time, the term "film" is assumed to refer to something akin to
>"cinematic work of art" - an artifact made to fulfill complex experiential
>("aesthetic") expectations raised by specific ("cinematic") tradition.
>Usually it is further implicitely restricted - with "film" mostly the
>"narrative film" is refered to, and under "cinematic tradition" a narrative
>based cinematic tradition is assumed. Most film histories and film theories
>are basicaly histories and theories of narrative film, with possible
>"quarantine space" reserved for "documentary", and less occasionally
>"avant-guarde" film, mostly ruling out video and television.
>
>An alternative is the wider conception of "film" you clearly delineated:
>"film" refers to
>""moving images" in general", taking in consideration "images displayed in
>television programmes, videos, cine films, security camera footage,
>photofinish technology, video art, animations, computer generated images
>etc." This concept is still limited to the artifacts made to fulfill some
>experiential expectations, but these are not constrained to be specifically
>esthetic, nor "traditionaly cinematic", especially not just narrative, but
>of any kind there is (and of any tradition - besides the dominant cinematic
>one - there is; e.g. tradition of "mass communication", "art world",
>"security survailance", "science research", "familly recordings",
>"multimedia", "interactive games"...).
>
>I would - quite forcefully - opt, and argue for this last, wider concept of
>"film".
>
>It is not just the question of "operative definition", of particular
>research/discourse suitability. The constricted concept of "film" seriously
>cripples generalization and differentiation validity of philosophy of film
>in any of its disciplinary field.
>
>E.g. how could theory of "film image" ("cinematic representation") claim to
>be validly differentiating and general if not taking in consideration the
>connections and distictions within the whole empirical field of "moving
>images" - among the, say, "cinematographic record" of conventional filming,
>hand animation image, computer animation image, on-film trace (xerox) image;
>among the different "mimetic" kinds of moving images and different
>"nonmimetic" kinds. How could we speak speciffically enough about the
>"moving" pictures without considering the distinctions of movement
>representation in "standard cinematographic recordings" vs. "live
>animation"; "full animation" vs. "reduced, simbolic" animation and
>"pixilation"; film/video sequence vs. slide sequence?
>
>How could one justify the restriction of film theory to the film-stock bond
>artifact, when video-film transitions are today so common, when combination
>of electronic and film-stock shooting and processing is common, when we
>watch films at least equally often, and frequently more often, on video,
>within TV broadcast, and now on computer monitors, then on the theatrical
>screens. How to exclude TV from theoretical consideration when most of
>fictional and nonfictional work (films, serials; documentaries; commercials;
>journals) that originated and historically developed in cinematic enviroment
>is overtaken and further developed and broadened by TV, and now by computer
>based multimedia? How could anyone relevantly regard the cultural function
>of cinema, if not taking in the consideration the changes in the function of
>cinefilms, and in the function and structure of cinematically known forms
>brought by the context of television broadcast (i.e. by the regular, whole
>day, TV programme schedule)?
>
>How could theory of editing (of a cut, and of "sintagmatic" editing
>construction) claim to be empirically valid enough by taking only the
>narrative based "continuity editing" (and, possibly, in addition - the worn
>out case of Eisensteinian "montage"), and not contrasting and co-researching
> it with the important spectar of "discontuity" editing, i.e. with a variety
>of "non-narrative" sintagmas in most of non-narative kind of films and
>materials, and with the, quite common, non-continuity places in narrative
>films (inter-scenic and inter-sequential transitions; ellipis)? Editing and
>"non-editing" in all variety of "non-cinematic" moving images cannot be
>evaded if we want to have proper understanding of the cognitive processing
>at the basis of editing.
>
>How could theory of "narrative discourse" be valid and distinctive enough if
>not contrasted and co-researched with the coexisting kinds of discours:
>"expository" ("argumentative") discourse (of, say, scientific films; politic
>and educational documentary); "poetic" ("associative", "evocative")
>discourse (of, say, "poetic documentary", some of the music clips,
>commercials, trailers, TV jingles...); "descriptive" discourse (of much of
>documentary TV news footage, anthropological documentaries, familly films,
>survailance video footages...). How could "narrative construction" be
>properly theorized if not dealing with the field problem of many narrative
>films containing descriptive, expository and poetic parts, or sides, and not
>dealing how the distinction among these sides and parts is processed? Much
>of the stylistic differentiations within the empirical corpus of actual
>narrative film would not be properly understood without taking different
>discoursive options and their actual combinations into account. And, how
>could any discourse be properly theorized if it is not contrasted to the
>"non-discourse" kind of footage (sequence of unordered rushes; a stretch of
>survailance video footage; cassette of unedited familly shots taken on
>different occasions...).
>
>Now, it would not do to take all of the "non-artistic" (non-cinematic) kinds
>of moving images in consideration as kind of a vague, contrasting
>"otherness", just as a handy "thought" construct. They need to be focally
>researched with all the research force and experience evolved in regard to
>the narrative tradition. I doubt that the analiticity of the (empirical)
>film theory would be ever enhanced without seriously taking the wide field
>of moving images of all kind into consideration. (The empirical film theory
>has been actually quite stagnant for a long time: just look at any listings
>of "film conventions" or "film rules" in the textbooks and articles on "film
>language", "film form", "film technique", "film art", "film retoric", "film
>psychology"). And they would not be widely and focally researched if the
>film-philosophical community would, by traditional silent agreement,
>unreflectively stick to the narrow (narrative art) "film" concept.
>
>Yours
>Hrvoje Turkovic
>Academy of Drama Art, University of Zagreb
>Croatia
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: K.M.L. STOCK <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: 05. siječanj 1999. 14:00
>Subject: What is a film?
>
>
>Having just returned from the Christmas break, I was interested to
>read the recent correspondance centred around the initial observation
>that CNN was a "great movie". Which led me to wonder: what exactly
>do subscribers to this list thinks that the word "film" in
>"film-philosophy list" refers to? For example, does "film" in this
>context refer to any visual display produced through the recording of
>images onto the medium of film? This would include live images
>brought to us through CNN, but not computer generated "films" such as
>Toy Story. Or does "film" refer to "moving images" in general - in
>which case, shouldn't the discussions be widened out to consider
>images displayed in television programmes, videos, cine films,
>security camera footage, photofinish technology, video art,
>animations, computer generated images etc? Isn't it rather the case
>that the "film" in "film-philosophy list" refers to the type of item
>usually referred to in sentences such as "I watched a great film last
>night"; "I am a film critic"; "What's your favourite film"?etc. This
>certainly seems to be the context in which most "philosophers of
>film" use the term, which leds me to assume that most people
>interested in the philosophy of film are specifically interested in
>this sort of "film", rather than "moving images" in general.
>Although I have not got a fully formed definition of film in this
>context (yet), I would be interested to know what anyone thought
>about my initial intuition.
>Yours
>Kathleen Stock
>Department of Philosophy
>University of Leeds
>
>
>
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