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Dear fellow thread enthuisiasts, Not much time for e-mail today because I have to finish all my work before six, since a summer film festival, something which Montreal seems to have in almost limitless supply, is screening old sci-fi silent movies with live musical accompaniment and I feel that, as a lover of film, this is the sort of oppurtunity that it would be wrong to miss. (Does anyone else share this odd sense of duty or obligation to share in certain cinematic experiences when the opportunity arises? What could be the grounds of a duty of this kind? A film buff's duty to self, perhaps...but I digress.) Anyway I just wanted to add that I think that Michelle's and Michael's comments are spot on. It does seem that there are films that do excite the imagination, even if we want to say that not all film watching experiences are based primarily on acts of the imagination. My question for Michelle and Michael (and others too) is what they think the fact that a film excites a viewer's imagination might add to that viewer's film going experince in particular. Does it make the experience more interesting? Does it enhance our emotional responses? Does it create a more active role for the viewer? Now, it seems that we might be tempted to quickly answer yes, yes, yes to these questions. My only worry is that we might also find that an imagination that is too active during our film going experience actually detracts (or perhaps I should simply say distracts) from our experience of the film itself (an experience we may truly value, especially if we think we can share it with others). If this is so, maybe we should say that the benefits of a film that excites the human imagination are largely felt after the credits roll, when we are left alone with our thoughts once more and are giving the chance to muse over and sense our reactions to the experience we have just shared. All the best, and thank you again for everyone's interest, Karen Bardsley Montreal, Canada %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%