film versus video

[GavinRees@aol.com]

It has been very interesting to see everybody bringing up the old film versus
video debate. Old though it maybe, I think it is always pertinent. 

My own feelings about the difference between the two is very simple, and I
hope people don't think that I am being too reductionist in stating it so
baldly. Appreciation of film for me is about feeling. When you go to a cinema,
you are confronted by a wall of light, of colours, sensations, and distortions
in the passage of time that you can experience physically through your body as
well as your mind. Tarkovsky used to get very angry with  journalists who
asked him what he thought when he watched other people's films. He replied
that he didnot "think about them", but that if they were good then he "felt
them." I don't think he was just trying to be difficult and anti-intellectual,
in a "I am the greatest artist" kind of way. His argument was that if you read
film too analytically and too self-conscously as a text, then you change the
nature of the work, and cut yourself off from deeper levels of experience
which you can't articulate in words. That could be restated as saying that the
most valuable thing about film is what you can't easily say about it! 

I am bringing this up, because when I watch videos I notice, that I read them
in  a much more self-conscious intellectual way than  I do when I go to the
cinema. It brings the film critic out in me more. Both approaches have value,
but they are very different. 

Another thought that might be worth tossing into the discussion, I think
Tarkovsky named 3 Japanese film makers in his top 5. (Saying that,  I havenot
got the reference with me, and I could be getting this completely wrong, but I
think he named Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi along with Bresson and one other.)
Anyway, whatever the mathematics of it, Tarkovsky seemed to be implying that
Japanese films in particular worked on an emotional rather than an
intellectual level. Maybe then they really do need to be appreciated in the
cinema, more than some others?
 
Just a thought!


Gavin Rees