film vs video

[Abe-Nornes]

>Finally, I have one request for Markus. In your posting you says, "I make sure
>my students are
>cognizant of the differences between media and the larger issues at stake. I
>make this part of the
>class." I, for one, would be very interested to hear how you do this. Could
>you briefly outline
>how you do this?

I generally do this by bringing all the issues of this thread into class
discussions where appropriate. And I do this not only to raise important
issues, but also to make students appreciate the fact that this is one of
the few schools that still shows film on film as a rule (they _pay_ for it
as well, since student fees for every course go to support the rentals). I
can give you a couple examples:

In my undergraduate film theory class, we read many canonical texts that
touch on the issues we're discussing. Certain theorists are producing
ontological arguments about the cinema (most of which are image centered
and exclude sound, let alone the reception context Aaron points to). When
we read Arnheim's attack on the sound cinema, I tell them how he
still----at 90 something----refuses to go to the cinema, that he's given up
on it because sound destroyed it; I have used the film/video debate (and
its more recent digital/analog twist) to provoke students along the same
lines. Sometimes, I take a more dramatically knee-jerk film purist position
(a position as extreme as Arnheims, and which I do not think I've produced
in my previous post) just to draw the students out. I think you can do the
similar things with theorists as divergent as Vertov and Bazin. 

When discussing issues and ideologies of "authenticity" and "aura" with an
article like Benjamin's, I've used the film/video struggle. As Peter's post
suggests, even the scratches on the film confer a kind of "aura" of the
original that one doesn't feel with video. 

In my Japanese cinema classes, I spend a great deal of time discussing
canon issues, and as we've seen video is never far away. Issues surrounding
video always come up in considerations of the benshi and reception
contexts; the Matsuda benshi tapes are very helpful (and Planet in Osaka
has produced a few nice ones, too), however, the students realize the
magnitude of the difference between these tapes and film when I perform as
benshi for _I Was Born, But..._. Aaron emphasizes the apparatus of the
reception context, but I still don't think you can divorce it from the film
image as well. 

In my documentary class, I spend a lot of time on these issues, especially
at the point of production. Work produced in a video medium from the
beginning often has an immediacy, a more essayistic quality to it. Can you
imagine Sadie Benning or Marlon Riggs on film...or Idemitsu Mako for that
matter?  This leads to more ontological questions....

This is nothing to say of television!

Markus