Damian,

You ask

> What is filmic reality, as it has no definition in your
> summation, for afilmic reality to rely upon it?

The answer is contained within Souriau's scheme, which was not just his, by
the way. It represents the product of discussions among a group of French
scholars in the early 50s, and appears in the preface to a book called L’
Univers Filmique (Paris: Flammarion, 1953). It is this short piece of
writing - I don't know if it's ever been translated - to which we owe 'the
productive years of film criticism' - the introduction to film studies of a
series of terms, although only two have passed into general theoretical
currency - profilmic and diegetic. So it should not be dismissed as of
merely historical interest.

Is fifty years really so long ago? Post-war France was the cauldron of a
rebirth of modern thinking and artistic creativity after the devastation of
the Second World War, every bit as critical for our understanding of the
(post)modern world as Vienna in the years before the First. It is also the
intellectual milieu which within a few years produced the nouvelle vague,
which as everyone knows, changed cinema for ever. Besides, the scheme is not
strictly structuralist, but shares some ideas with structuralism because
they were in the air at the time.

Afilmic reality indicates unselected reality, reality independent of any
relation with film, the world about us which exists independently of the
camera being pointed at it. Filmic reality would be the representational
space of the screen, which is a combination of Souriau's other categories.

Profilmic reality refers to the selective arrangement of elements (the
actor, the decor, etc.,) that are placed in front of the camera and leave
their impression on the filmstrip; or the various kinds of actuality at
which the documentarist points their camera. This is the indexical aspect.
But it's always accompanied by the filmographic, which comprises the
elements of style or subjectivity in the cinematography, the process of
montage, etc. through which the iconic aspect enters.

Screenic (or filmophanic) reality is a term I don't much like, because what
we're talking about here is not a reality but a space of representation, in
Lefebvre's scheme (in The Production of Space), the projected image as a
form of space-time. Again this emphasises the iconic aspect, the aspect of
film as a symbolic discourse of an aesthetic kind.

Diegetic indicates narrative content (as opposed to non-diegetic elements,
such as background music) and is actually a rather slippery term.

What Souriau calls spectatorial reality (again I don't much like the word
'reality' here) is shaped by all the forgoing but equally depends on all the
sociological and psychological factors which the spectator brings with them
to the act of spectatorship. What this  comprises is what Bakhtin, speaking
of literary genres, refers to as the orientation and the situation of the
audience. This where what you call the 'experience', the 'affect' comes in.
And this is paired with Souriau's 'creational reality', or what I would
prefer to call the creative space of the filmmaker-as-author, where the film
begins.

I agree with the comment of another contributor that the present - very
interesting - strand is not always producing disagreements but rather
misunderstandings. What I like about Souriau's scheme is that it's flexible
enough to be able to include a range of theoretical approaches in
articulation with each other rather than mutual hostility.

Michael Chanan
http://www.mchanan.dial.pipex.com/chananhome.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Damian Peter
> Sutton
> Sent: 23 June 2000 15:22
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: film vs film experience
>
>
> Warren,
>
> I'm not sure that recoursing to a prescription of film
> theory is the answer here. To do so stifles
> progress. As if there could be one answer? Souriau's
> categories seem a bit structuralist to me, and seem to take
> the differing levels of experience as separated. You might
> not agree, and that's where discussion lies. And besides,
> how does a film theory from fifty years ago (not that it's
> not important and educative) silence the productive years
> of film criticism since. When I said a film may end, I
> meant the projection. When I said the experience, I meant
> the affect. But these are separate only as we might
> separate object and subject - only as nominal values. An
> author may create the object, and our perception of it is
> our own - yet they are also inseparable. As Bergson would
> argue.
>
> I do like Souriau's idea of separating authorial intentions
> from spectatorial reception, but I have a question:
>
> What is filmic reality, as it has no definition in your
> summation, for afilmic reality to rely upon it?
>
>
> Lastly, I'm sorry that this discussion seems cyclical and
> typical for you, and that we're not as erudite or as well
> planned as written analysis. Perhaps you
> would prefer this to passionate discussion. I'll try
> harder. I don't see us reinventing the wheel, since to
> assume so is to assume that film, film perception, and film
> reception, were created according to a singular principle
> which cannot be broken. The abundance of film theory shows
> us how slippery film and film theory actually is.
> ----------------------
> Damian Peter Sutton
> [log in to unmask]
>



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%