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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