Warning - do not step into the ring with Matt Clayfield
on matters of the cinema. You will get served.
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Enric" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > It is the form of a duration around 90
> > minutes with three acts that does define the cinematic form.
>
> This is so wrong it's not funny.
>
> The length criterion (not to mention the absurd narrative-biased three
> act structure criterion) completely disregards almost the entire
> avant-garde movement, many films of which are decidedly more cinematic
> than the narrative films you see to think define cinema (see Brakhage,
> Breer, Mekas, Deren, VanDerBeek, Fischinger, Richter, and so on). It
> also disregards masterpieces like 'Les Vampires' (399 min), Tarr's
> 'Sátántangó' (450 min), Lanzmann's 'Shoah' (544 min), and Rivette's
> 'Out 1' (729 min). I can assure you that these are among the most
> cinematic films of all time.
>
> The three act structure criterion doesn't just disregard films from
> the avant-garde, either, but narrative films with one act (short
> films), two acts ('Sleuth'), four ('Shoah'), more ('Playtime'), and so
> on, as well. Again, all incredibly cinematic films.
>
> Your definition of cinematic form seems to me to speak only of your
> very limited understanding of everything that cinema is and can be.
>
> It's like saying that literature is defined by novels of approximately
> four hundred pages in length, as opposed to by words, any number of
> them, arranged to make meaning, or to create aesthetic effect, no
> more, no less.
>
> It's like saying that music is defined by four quarter time
> compositions that run for approximately three or four minutes and have
> lyrics, often which rhyme, as opposed to by sounds, arranged by tone,
> timbre, quality, and so on, for any length of time, again for some
> sort of aesthetic effect, pleasurable or intentionally otherwise.
>
> It's like saying that visual art is defined by one type of paint, on
> canvas, hung on a wall somewhere in France, as opposed to by shapes,
> colours, textures, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
>
> You see where I'm going.
>
> Cinema is not defined--not in any way, shape or form--by films with
> ninety minute running times and three act (narrative) structures.
>
> It is defined by moving images (occasionally accompanied by sounds)
> existing (they don't even have to be arranged) in time. Cinema is
> time-based images.
>
> This post has nothing to do with videoblogging (it could, but I'm
> tired and want to go to bed), but I'll stand up for cinema until my
> bloody, no doubt premature death. All I can say is that if our
> definitions of videoblogging are as restrictive and reductive as this
> definition of cinema, then we're simply not the right people to be
> developing it--in fact, I'd argue that we'd be hindering it far more
> than we'd be helping it.
>
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