I had some trouble deciding whether to reply to William's lengthy post
on or offline. I hope this doesn't jamm up the life of disinterested
listees' browsers.
William said: Is this necessarily so? One might wager that Sartre,
Kierkegaard, Camus and
others (are they philosophers?) used the novel to express philosophical
ideas.
Dan Replies: Could any of them have written the script, turned it into
a shooting script, raised the money and put together the players etc?
W: But perhaps this is the rub. The emergence of philosophy
in/on/by/with/from
film not only asks us to repose the question 'what IS philosophy?', but
also
'what IS film?' - and, perhaps most excitingly, and in the Framptonian
style, what is filmosophy?
D: Here, the equation presented by the word IS has the main value of
generating a lot of mostly to me interesting conversation.
W: In other words, are not all films philosophical?
D: All life is philosphical if you're that kind of guy or gal.
W: What is a philosopher?
D: In this case someone who picks the medium with the intent to use it
to clarify (rather than express) a philosophical issue.
W:This is certainly an interesting idea! I guess this makes Hubble most
definitely a philosophical filmmaker.
D: Hubble describes, it's the scientists who explore.
W: Surely the non-moralizing and the non-prescriptive do not and
cannot, if we are to talk
about the filmic or literary results of human endeavour, do not exist as
anything other than a concept or a language-game?
D: One can ascribe a moral intent to most anything, but there are
endeavors whose focus is so explicitly neutral in ethical or moral
terms, that the moral component in the decision is adventitious at best.
W: Can philosophical cinema
investigate anything other than philosophical cinema?
D: Yes, most definitely. By my definition cinema that investigates ONLY
cinema would be cinematic cinema theory. Think about Back and Forth or
La Region Cenrale - they are about perception and consciousness - and
not just cinematic perception, but the way WE are wired, and the way WE
are situated in existence.
W:Or perhaps we should ask why we do not
understand the film in such a way and accept its 'otherness' - not
hierarchically, but, should there be such a thing, objectively - and
seek to
redress our own understanding of not just this film, but all films and
all
things, in order to see whether there is a different way of
understanding
the world other than the way that conforms to our own view of
things...?)
D: I think this is the heart of the matter William, and this it seems
to me describes the process of a film actually doing philosophy. Given
that, I suppose one could call a film that had no thoughts of doing
this to me, but because of who I AM, it forces a shift in my recogntion
of a philosophically prominent condition, I guess then I'd have to
admit to some accidental philosophy going on. Hmm that sounds kind of
strrange maybe I should think that one through a bit.
W: But, to find a film that seemingly (be it through chance, the vision
of a
single auteur, or as a result of the input of many individuals) does
ask and
investigate these questions, whether it simultaneously tells a story or
not,
is not the work of a philosopher, but that of a filmmaker. Or,
hopefully
this makes many more filmmakers also philsophers than you seem, Dan, to
wish...
D: I guess for me it depends on whether I wind up entertaining some
philospophical notions as a result, or am actually forcd to think
something through. My prejudice is that philosophy is hard and
entertainment isn't.
W:This suggests the
participation of the spectator in herself posing these questions.
D: Where did SHE come from? Is she listeniung in on this conversation?
W:By this rationale, I'm
with Rick Altman in querying Bordwell's surmise of Hollywood as an
excessively obvious cinema and rethinking it as a deceptively obvious
cinema... Making it as worthy - more worthy? - of study as experimental
film?)
D: Sure but this is film criticism isn't it?
W: What disinterest can there be except for an extra-real, divine
vision? . Disinterestedness is beautifully
impossible.
D: Nah, just a matter of keeping your eye on the ball.
W:I think there will come a time when we pictorialise pictorially
driven concepts. I suspect it happens.
D: All the time, but I think that experimental film asshole may have
had it partially right... it sometimes takes learning to read
differently.
W: I am not sure that every time I pick up a
pen, I think about the simple ontological and epistemological questions
that
that apparatus poses.
D: The pen isn't the apparatus, the language is.
W: By this rationale, therefore, anyone who fails to confront the simple
ontological and epistemological questions that these apparatuses pose
is not
a philosopher, either. Rendering much philosophy (perchance all
philosophy)
null as far as 'philosophy' is concerned...
D:For me, this is what the PI was all about.
W: And I suspect it's pointless to spend too long worrying about these
simple
ontological and epistemelogical questions, because we all have to stop
theorising at some point and put finger to keyboard or press record on
our
HDV cameras and actually DO something..
D: Yes, but hopefully with a sense (illusion?) of clarity.
Thanks for your dialogue.
dan
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