Within the convention of film, we can
uncouple ourselves from the physical limitations of our universe
of existence, from social or cultural commitments, and generate
a new frame for action. The love affair between Hollywood and
emerging technologies for creating the impossible in the virtual
space of digital synthesis testifies to this. But we cannot,
after all, transcend the limitations of the underlying structure
on which cinematography is based. Generated near the height of
the civilization of literacy, cinematography represents the
borderline between practical experiences corresponding to the
scale for which literacy was optimal, and the new scale for which
both literacy and film are only partially adequate. It is even
doubtful that the film medium will survive as an alternative to
the new media because it is, for all practical purposes,
inefficient.
Cinematography influenced our experience with language, while
simultaneously pointing to the limits of this experience. A film
is not a visually illustrated text, or a transcription of a
play. Rather, it is a mapping from a universe of sentences and
meanings assigned to a text, to a more complex universe, one of
consecutive images forming (or not) a new coherent entity. In
the process, language performs sometimes as language (dialogue
among characters), other times as a pre-text for the visual
cinematographic text.
Before film, we moved only in the universe of our natural,
physical existence, on the theatrical stage, or in the universe
of our imagination, in our dreams.
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