CINEMA OF ICONOCLASM
(extracted from gtalk with eevon)
i worry myself sometimes because i'm so deeply obsessed with cinema, old cinema especially, that rsd sometimes feels less like its own movie but rather an encyclopaedia of cinematic references: godard, bogart, bollywood, kar wai, karina, takeshi, femme fatale, lynch, assasins, musicals, gangsters. icon after icon after icon, i plough up and fit in. some days, i look at videogirl and ltw and think these are real people, because people connect with them, feel like them. and then some days i think they are nothing but brightly coloured cutouts from cinematic history.
i'm not ashamed. i just think about it and it can be a bit intellectually unsettling. i believe that great films provide you moments where you can zone out and because of a scene or a dialogue, you momentarily escape from the film and think about something. when i saw in the mood for love, i zoned out and saw myself saying the following words "my films don't move slowly. my films don't move at all".
when you say that the actors need a point of reference to begin somewhere, i suspect mine will go nowhere, and they will end up exactly where they started. icon to icon. to say that an actor begins with an icon as a reference point, a starting point if you will, implies that the actor progresses from there and builds something new, albeit in reference to that earlier point. i suspect that no one will go anywhere here. fai will be my image of a takeshi at the start and he will finish the film as an image of takeshi. bel will begin the film as karina and she will finish it exactly the same way. my films don't move slowly. my films don't move at all.
it's the cinema of iconoclasm. nobody is new. everybody is an image, an approximation of the original.
eco said that when the originals are no longer available, the last copy is the original.
in fact, originality is no more and never will be anymore. rsd is a most highly unoriginal film, but still i believe it is unique.
i worry myself sometimes because i'm so deeply obsessed with cinema, old cinema especially, that rsd sometimes feels less like its own movie but rather an encyclopaedia of cinematic references: godard, bogart, bollywood, kar wai, karina, takeshi, femme fatale, lynch, assasins, musicals, gangsters. icon after icon after icon, i plough up and fit in. some days, i look at videogirl and ltw and think these are real people, because people connect with them, feel like them. and then some days i think they are nothing but brightly coloured cutouts from cinematic history.
i'm not ashamed. i just think about it and it can be a bit intellectually unsettling. i believe that great films provide you moments where you can zone out and because of a scene or a dialogue, you momentarily escape from the film and think about something. when i saw in the mood for love, i zoned out and saw myself saying the following words "my films don't move slowly. my films don't move at all".
when you say that the actors need a point of reference to begin somewhere, i suspect mine will go nowhere, and they will end up exactly where they started. icon to icon. to say that an actor begins with an icon as a reference point, a starting point if you will, implies that the actor progresses from there and builds something new, albeit in reference to that earlier point. i suspect that no one will go anywhere here. fai will be my image of a takeshi at the start and he will finish the film as an image of takeshi. bel will begin the film as karina and she will finish it exactly the same way. my films don't move slowly. my films don't move at all.
it's the cinema of iconoclasm. nobody is new. everybody is an image, an approximation of the original.
eco said that when the originals are no longer available, the last copy is the original.
in fact, originality is no more and never will be anymore. rsd is a most highly unoriginal film, but still i believe it is unique.
posted by Fergus at 3:21 PM
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