自从雷蒙·威廉斯的《关键词：文化与社会的词汇》被引介到大陆之后，现在，在书店的书架上以关键词为名的书已经屡见不鲜了。这些后来的关键词书籍与威廉斯的《关键词》在旨趣上颇不相同。威廉斯考察的是日常社会交流活动中的常用词汇，这些词是我们在进行思考和价值判断时无法离开的，威廉斯试图通过考察它们的语义源流和用法演变来洞识隐藏在词语背后的社会意识变化轨迹，从中找寻意识形态的痕迹。这与威廉斯提倡文化研究时的立场有关。后来的关键词书籍大都是围绕特定学科，把学科内理论术语作为关键词条目，在详尽考察术语的演变轨迹中把握理论思路的脉络走向。在某种意义上，这刚好与威廉斯提倡文化研究的初衷刚好相反，一个是把理论视角向社会边缘阶层扩展，把原来理论根本不关注的东西作为一种最为关键的对象来研究，一个则是理论学科内部的溯本源流。

二十世纪被称作是批评的世纪，人文领域的理论变革层出不穷，一个思潮接着一个思潮，一浪未平，一浪又起，从思想史的角度来看，可谓壮观。每一个新的思潮、新理论思路的产生，伴随着一批呼吸与共的新术语。有些比较极端的学者自创新词，以示正听，但这种情况总在少数，大部分的情况是旧瓶装新酒，古老的词汇在那些理论大师手里发出新的光泽，引导人们走向一个全新的视角，一个全新的理论世界，所以它们也就成为了“关键词”。不过，在一个外行人，或者入门不深的初学者，林立的术语无异于一堵思想的墙壁。在日常的阅读里，如果没有相关背景的了解，一个突兀而出的术语往往就在一篇文章、一个句段中围起一堵围墙，让人不得而入，绕门而过。汪民安在他主编的《文化研究关键词》前言中把这种情况解释为词语的深渊。这样的比喻夹杂着一种心有余悸的感觉，在中国当代环境下，它似乎隐隐带着一个沉浸于西方理论话语世界的学者不自在的恐惧。这种恐惧来自于每个词语背后所隐藏着的那个巨大的世界，它牵涉到思想史、文化史的方方面面。对于一个不内在于西方文明的外来者，却又为之深深吸引，急迫地需要完全进入那个文明的当代最新思想截面的人来说，他在登堂入室的时候，这种恐惧好象很难避免。事实上，我更愿意用另一个比喻，那些词对于登堂入室者来说，意味着一个纯然全黑的世界，同时，它也是一个思想的路标，它向你提示那样一个世界的存在，当我们去探讨这个词语的轨迹的时候，它会引领我们进入那个完全不同的观念世界，在这里，我们完全以原来所没有的方式来重新看待我们自己的现实。

汪民安主编的这本《文化研究关键词》收录的是我们在进行二十世纪理论阅读时，常常会碰到的术语。这些词是从西方的语境下产生出来，是西方学者洞察和体认自身思想生存境况的产物。它们中有许多已经成为一个标志，标志的前面我们当前面临思想和精神危机，标志的背后则是西方数个世纪乃至上千年以来西方思想绵延。通过这种词的隐密“传记”，我们可以比较迅捷地进入到每个词的历史和当前语境，使得我们对思想传统的洞察和体味，有了更多的空间。词语也是有生命的，它会在特定的时机下被激活出来，焕发出生机，爆发出巨大的能量，准确地为我们对于世界某种尚处于混沌的认识找到一个准确的基点，为那些内在的压抑找到一个表达的出口。这样的词是有力量的。但这种力量往往是历史性，这种力量的强度不可能会在所有的时代都持续下去。随着时代环境的变迁，我们自身与世界的交互作用再度发生变化，那么这些词的又不够“准确”了，因为我们变了，世界也变了，于是，又进入新一轮的词的繁殖过程。编者在谈到选择标准时说，他是取决于“它们在今天被谈论的频率”、“它们在今天文化理论领域的重要性”来收录的。事实上，这种“频率”和“重要性”在不同的文明、不同的文化族群那里，都不一样。但我们似乎只能这样来做，虽然我们纷纷谈论已经进入了文化相对主义的时代，但核心的理论话语生产的主导模式依然是以西方的模式在进行的。什么时候在类似这样的关键词书中，出现一些产生于我们自身文化领域的、对于我们的文化现实有着强大的贯穿力量的词语，这是我看这样的书时，最为关心的一个问题，当然，那已经属于另外一个更加广阔，更加深远的问题了。(冯欣　写于2007年5月16日)

汪民安主编《文化研究关键词》，江苏人民出版社，2007年，定价49.5元。

　　1948年，当爱森斯坦的心脏由于承受太大的压力猝然停止跳动时，塔尔科夫斯基正处于青春的忧郁和父亲缺失的恐慌中，上一代人在波澜壮阔的20年代后突然进入气氛别样的1930年代，那种集体性的巨大心理落差在年轻的这一代人那里不可能有切身的体会。上一代人一开始都是出于内心地去做集体性的表达，当这种表达由于各种原因受到抑制时，才转向在集体性表达方式中寻求自我表达的空间。下一代人一有了自我意识的时候，他和世界的关系就已经是压抑性的关系，自我表达的需要从一开始就存于他们内心深处了。虽然电影在国家意识形态建设的地位仍然没有改变，但是经过时代的风云变幻，个人与政治、环境的关系已经变了，对于创作者的要求变了，创作者的自我形成机制变了。

塔尔科夫斯基在《雕刻时光》里指责爱森斯坦的电影观念过于专制，没有给观众留下足够的空间，这种鸿沟不仅在于对于电影本质的理解，更在于两代人完全不同的世界观念。爱森斯坦把蒙太奇当作一种辩证法来理解，把它当作到达最终理性彼岸的一座浮桥。他曾设想把《资本论》拍成电影，因为他相信电影不仅仅是在比喻的意义上，而是真的可以成为一种语言，成为人类进行理性思考和探索的一种工具。他也曾设想把乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》拍成电影，因为他相信电影也可以达到与潜意识相适应的那种状态，从而超越理性和生理感官。在塔尔科夫斯基这里，电影不是外在于人的工具，而是人对生命的一种体验方式，是支撑着人继续生命探索的一种力量。塔尔科夫斯基终生寻求能够在他的电影中能够显现俄罗斯传统宗教中的神性，其实，对于他自己来说，电影几乎已经成了一种宗教式的精神依托。这种复杂、幽深的自我怎样在集体性表达中隐现，是一个根本性的问题。在他苏联国内的作品里，反复地涉及到沉默这样的主题。《安德烈·鲁勃廖夫》核心的问题即在于画家停止创作，保持沉默。这种沉默我们如果单单地从影片内部来看，有时候会显得毫无来由，但如果联系导演的语境和心态，我们可以在这种沉默中明显地看出鲁勃廖夫的精神世界与他的现实之间的界线，他以自己特定的方式小心翼翼地维持着自我的疆界，阻止外界的杂质的侵入。沿着这条思路下来，我们看到《镜子》的开头那段长长的纪录片时，不禁要会神而笑。一个医生用催眠的方法使一个口吃患者进入彻底的放松状态，治好了他的口吃。病人对着镜头流利而大声地说道：“我可以说出来了！”这一切只是因为《镜子》是一部彻底的自传式作品。

那些经历过黑白片时代、并且在黑白电影时期取得过非凡成就的电影导演都十分慎重地对待他的第一盒彩色胶片，比如安东尼奥尼的《红色沙漠》与之前的现代爱情三部曲所形成的强烈对照关系。有意思的是，爱森斯坦和塔尔科夫斯基两个人都在他们极为重要的作品中最关键的段落使用了一小段彩色胶片（如果不算上《压路机与小提琴》这部毕业作业的话）。当鲁勃廖夫目睹俄罗斯的重重苦难，最后在塔尔科夫斯基所特有的上帝视角的镜头的凝视下，决定打破沉默，重新创作。这时候，电影画面在一堆燃烧的木炭中化出为彩色胶片，然后长时间地以不同构图凝视鲁勃廖夫的圣像画代表作《古老圣约的三位一体》（这幅画在他《索拉里斯》等影片中不断地以不同形式出现）。黑白的生命，黑白的俄罗斯世界透露着阵阵严酷，最后它们都在炭火的燃烧中熔化成了色彩绚烂的壁画作品。

爱森斯坦唯一的彩色段落出现在他最后一部影片《伊凡雷帝》第二部的结尾。亲身参加过十月革命这种伟大变革的爱森斯坦很长一段时间都无法从他青年时代的那种无神论狂欢中走出来，以至于后来国内政治风云变幻，电影艺术需要的是已经是维护稳定，而他依然停滞在当初先锋艺术精神的余音回响中。他不断地修正自己的蒙太奇理论，同时在创作上也向新的集体性表述方式靠拢。30年代，他从美国回到苏联之后，经过数年不寻常的沉默之后，开始拍摄《白静草原》。他放弃了他的基本原则之一，不使用专业演员。这部充满着《墨西哥万岁》所激发起来的巨大宗教热情的电影在拍摄过程中就被中止。在《亚历山大·涅夫斯基》中，他终于重新找到了新的集体性表述方式，出现了主导着整个影片的主人公。这部影片在苏联国内为他带来了比《战舰波将金》还要高的官方荣誉，可他自己对这部作品并不为然。在接下来的《伊凡雷帝》中，特别是第二部中，或许是冥冥得知自己大限将至，这个一向对自己的内心忌讳莫深的电影巨人，通过极其复杂的转换方式，敞开了自己的内心世界，于是我们看到了一个极为怪异的影像世界。

这个令人恐怖的伊凡雷帝，他自己的内心也经历着恐怖的历程。这种恐怖埋藏在他的童年记忆中，埋藏在根植于他与宫廷重臣、教会、骄横的邻国紧张的关系中，最根本的原因是伊凡周围母性的缺失。苏珊·桑坦格曾批评《伊凡雷帝》几乎就是一本呆照集，这正好是在相反的方向上一语中的。《伊凡雷帝》简直就是男性肖像和压抑的建筑线条的构图集锦，极度压抑的空间中充满了仇恨、猜疑、背叛、谋杀。电影中只出现了两名女性。伊凡的姑妈，世袭贵族代表者欧芙洛西尼娅的脸是一张被彻底男性化的脸，她一直试图推翻伊凡，让她有缺陷的儿子弗拉迪米尔登上沙皇王位。伊凡的妻子是影片中唯一真正的女性，也是唯一始终站在伊凡这一边的人。可是她被欧芙洛西尼娅毒杀了。结尾段落里，当伊凡下令开始歌舞时，爱森斯坦的电影第一次有了色彩。舞蹈由伊凡亲信的近卫军来跳，唯一的女伶是男扮女妆的。这段诡异的舞蹈戏被拉得非常长，它几乎是刻意借助情节而进入一种死亡来临的狂欢节。其中展现的许多元素耐人寻味，它们其实是一种提示，爱森斯坦柔软的内心与他极端的观念、凌厉的风格之间的复杂转换关系。当刺杀伊凡的阴谋开始时，电影转回到黑白，转回到现实，转回阴冷而恐怖的气氛中。

塔尔科夫斯基《安德烈·鲁勃廖夫》之后的所有影片，都继续着黑白与彩色的对话。它们常常在现实与梦境、想象、回忆、幻觉中柔婉、细腻地转换，往往还带出一丝冥冥的质问，到《牺牲》时，那些凭空插入到剧情中的黑白段落，竟然有了几番天问的意思。我们不知道，爱森斯坦的创作如果不曾中止，他那种黑白彩色的凌厉碰撞又会发展成怎样，还会不会是一次内心的自我质询？ 

　　　　　　　　　　　　冯欣　写于　2007年5月16日深夜

    最近，有关阿巴斯·基亚罗斯坦米的中文书籍相继出现，使得我们了解到了这个当代最重要的电影导演的许多侧面。《特写：阿巴斯和他的电影》其实是《电影手册》阿巴斯专辑的文论选集，它包括了阿巴斯自己的电影笔记、访谈、电影年表和有关阿巴斯的重要电影评论。对于注目于当代电影的影迷，对于关注当代电影观念变化的理论工作者，这本书意义重大。虽然整本书的篇幅有限，但它从各个角度把我们从《橄榄树下》、《樱桃的滋味》、《五》、《十》等这些伟大作品带回到种子刚刚孕育的时刻，它提示我们，阿巴斯电影的格局构想、对电影的观念和视角，是在怎样的根基上生长起来的。特别是阿巴斯的自述，虽然讲述的是具体的电影拍摄中的技术问题，但这里面所体现出来的观念，是简约而穿透力的，有点类似于布莱松的《电影书写札记》，可以作为重要的电影理论文本。

以前看《樱桃的滋味》时，许多人对结尾的那一段纪录片式的Video，百思不得其解。通过时隐时现的月亮和一分多钟的黑暗的有力铺陈，自杀者的生命领悟已经与自然融为一体，死亡、虚无以及面对这一切时的内心动荡，整部电影的表达已经十分饱和，为什么还要来一段这样的工作纪录片呢？这让人想起了《特写》中入画的录音话筒、结尾时声带被切得断断续续的对话，阿巴斯总是逃避着传统式的高潮，总是叙事到达饱和的时刻，用不同的方式使观众从中疏离出来，这是为什么？我在这本小书中找到了答案。

在杜尚之后，打破艺术与生活的界限成为现代艺术的一股潮流。行为艺术的实质在于彻底瓦解围绕传统艺术观念而建立起来的一系列的美学观念和风格、技术等，它们在起始之初往往是带有革命性的，随着时间流逝，都是毫无例外地失去活力，成为新的表达的桎梏。视频装置艺术把影像放在特定的环境中，使处于环境中的观众把影像与现实空间感受联系起来，于是，屏幕上的影像的界限被打破了。在某种意义上，阿巴斯也在进行着类似的努力。不过，他的方式比较特殊。他仍然依赖于传统媒介本身的潜力，在作品内部达到自我解构。《樱桃的滋味》就是利用了纪录片的特性，它与现实之间那无法剪断的脐带，把它强行置入到剧情片中，打开了作品本身的限定。我们在他的自述和访谈还可以得知，他在电影制作的许多层面都贯彻了这样的思路，从而使电影真正达到无限敞开。

阿巴斯引用戈达尔的话，“现实是一部没有拍好的电影”，同时还强调，导演完成的只是半部电影，观众利用这半部电影来完成他自己的整部电影。所以他竭力使自己的电影保持着未完成的状态。他常常采用介于纪录片与剧情片之间的拍摄方式。他对于成规有着充分的警惕。他感叹自己在电影中不能成为一个讲故事的小说家，流畅的叙事往往是以约定俗成的生活和艺术逻辑为基础的。所以当叙事快要达到保和状态，整个故事的情境马上就要封闭，他就设法把观众从中疏离出来。《特写》和《樱桃的滋味》都是这种情况，疏离限制了观众的移情作用，在最大限度上使观众自己的现实与电影的“现实”完全重合。

阿巴斯基本上只使用非职业演员，他与演员长期讨论剧本和对话，直到演员已经认为角色的话就是他自己说的话。这些话已经与他的生活经验完全融合在了一起，剧本的台词真正地延伸到了无边的现实之中。阿巴斯从来不在采景之前写剧本，也就是说，他的剧本故事都是在已经存在的空间中生长出来，而不是为了虚构的故事而去营造一个空间。在这种意义上，阿巴斯号召：“必须取消导演！”因为有了他那样的制作方式，导演对于演员的指导往往是以更小的艺术来取代更大的生活。阿巴斯还强调放弃特写镜头，最大限度减少一场戏内部的镜头分切，这是在画面空间构成上，减少导演的控制，也就是增大观众的理解的多种可能性。

　　这些技术所形成的效果都汇集到一点：阿巴斯的电影严厉地拒绝了传统意义上的对现实的升华。他不是使艺术成为一个自治的王国，不是拿起剪刀切断艺术与现实的脐带，使电影成为“源于生活，高于生活”的艺术，而是尽最大的可能保留和延伸这条脐带，用电影内部的方法消除艺术与生活的界限。所以，必须拒绝艺术成规，剧情片封闭式的虚拟情境，许多传统的电影手法，都会使观众的电影经验和生活经验割裂开来，这等于承认了电影的艺术限定。所以阿巴斯说道：“所有这些规则你都必须学习，但学习的目的是避免使用！” （冯欣　写于07.05.22）

 [伊朗] 阿巴斯·基亚罗斯塔米等《特写：阿巴斯和他的电影》，单万里、李洋、肖熹译，张献民校，上海人民出版社，2007年5月。定价：22元。

最近我忙于写东西，不及更新博客，发现一些文章，帖上来。

by Wheeler Winston Dixon

There can be no doubt that the digitisation of the moving image has radically and irrevocably altered the phenomenon which we call the cinema, and that the characteristics of this transformation leave open an entirely new field of visual figuration. For those who live and work in the post-filmic era – i.e., those who have come to consciousness in the past twenty years – the digital world is not only an accomplished fact, but also the dominant medium of visual discourse. Many of my students remark that the liberation of the moving image from the tyranny of the “imperfect” medium of film is a technical shift that is not only inevitable, but also desirable.

For younger viewers, the scratch-free, grain-free, glossily perfect contours of the digital image hold a pristine allure that the relative roughness of the filmic image lacks. Indeed, by doing away with film, many of my students persuasively argue that we are witnessing the next step in what will be a continual evolution of moving image recording, which, in turn, will be followed by newer mediums of image capture now unknown to us. For others, those of my age, the filmic medium is a separate and sacrosanct domain, and the “coldness” of the digital image, stripped of any of the inherent qualities of light, plastics and coloured dyes, betrays a lack of emotion, a disconnect from the real in the classical Bazinian sense. DVDs are easy to use and cheap to produce, but can’t afford the visual depth and resonance of a projected 35mm filmic image. And, it seems to me, both arguments have valid points and are equally worthy of serious consideration.

Yet the problem, ultimately, with such considerations is that, in the end, there is no “right” answer, no clearly superior medium, no set of values that emerges as the clear winner in any disputation that must, of necessity, be based on personal æsthetics, as well as practical and financial consideration. 16mm, we might as well face it, is dead, and I mourn its passing as much as anyone. Indeed, I run 16mm prints in my classes as much as I possibly can, and revel in the pictorial values and warmth of the film image during my analytical student screenings of classic films. But, in my home, I no longer have a 16mm projection set-up, which I had for many years in the 1960s through to the early 1980s; DVDs have replaced the hundreds of 16mm prints I used to own, and have since sold or donated to various archives. When screened on a 50” plasma monitor in the proper aspect ratio, DVDs offer a very satisfactory viewing experience, even if what emerges is, at least in my view, a copy of a copy.

But it is important to note that the majority of viewers – and I include many of the new generation of academics here – make no such distinction. Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) on DVD, for example, 21^st century viewers realize that they are watching (optimally) a 35mm negative transferred to digital memory and then downloaded to a DVD for home use, and that the final image they watch “copies” the filmic nature of the original image, but at the same time gives only the “impression” of its original source material. But given this a priori assumption, 21^st century viewers quickly move past this empirical certainty to embrace this newly digitised image as the simulacrum of a 20^th century medium. There is no sadness in this and no betrayal of the maker’s original intent; it is merely a translation from one image capture medium to another.

Certainly it can be argued that this is an oversimplification of a rather knotty problem; film comes with one set of values inherently present in the stock itself (a tendency towards warmth in colour for some film stocks, or towards cooler hues in others, as well as characteristics of grain, depth and definition which are unique to each individual film matrix), while the digital video image offers another entirely different set of characteristics, verging on a hyperreal glossiness that seems to shimmer on the screen. To achieve a reconsideration of the basic states of representationalism inherent in any comparison of these two mediums is a difficult task, calling into question more than a century of cinematic practice, and a host of assumptions shared by practitioners and viewers alike. Insofar as the moving image is concerned, it might well be termed what Friedrich Nietzsche cited in Ecce Homo as the re-evaluation of all values, or “the old truth coming to an end” (1), opening up a series of questions, claims and counterclaims that instantaneously obliterate almost all of our preconceptions of the nature of the moving image.

This is hard work, and yet it is work that must be attempted critically and theoretically, because, paradoxically, it has already been accomplished as a physical fact; the film image is about to become the sarcophagus of memory, while a new medium of moving image recording takes centre stage, for the moment, its moment, bringing with it a whole new host of æsthetic and practical issues, such as archiving, distribution and audience reception; how different is it to view these images primarily in the privacy – or isolation – of one’s own home, as opposed to the communal nature of traditional filmic projection in an auditorium of strangers?

As Paolo Cherchi Usai notes:

I won’t shed tears over the death of cinema. This might be its first real chance to be taken seriously. It is estimated that about one and a half billion viewing hours of moving images were produced in the year 1999, twice the number made just a decade before. If that rate of growth continues, three billion viewing hours of moving images will be made in 2006, and six billion in 2011. By the year 2025 there will be some one hundred billion hours of these images to be seen. In 1895, the ratio was just above forty minutes, and most of it is now preserved. The meaning is clear. One and a half billion hours is already well beyond the capacity of any single human: it translates into more than 171,000 viewing years of moving pictures in a calendar year. (2)

In short, cinema history is so vast that it can never be encompassed, no matter how assiduously one might try, and images are disintegrating or being erased faster than we can possibly archive them. Jean Cocteau was right when he observed in 1943 that “a cinema studio is a factory for making ghosts. The cinema is a ghost language that has to be learned.” (3) But such a language, despite having widespread currency, is also a language that is inherently ephemeral, leaving a series of impressions that have more tangible currency than the fragile film stock on which they are fixed. The 21^st century has given us a new “ghost language” with its own rules, ciphers and grammar.

Such 20^th century fetish films as Peter Delpeut’s Lyrical Nitrate (1991) and The Forbidden Quest (1993) document the evanescent ebbing and fading of the filmic image in its last stages of existence, as its hold on physical existence threatens to expire from moment to moment, finding a tragic beauty in the ineluctable decay of the film image. But the digital image is also given to similar displays of spectacular mortality, dissolving at a moment’s notice in a whorl of pixels, image rips, rolling sync bars and video grain. For contemporary moving-image production, the line between film and digital has crossed this boundary, as well; in each instance, the image is only temporarily fixed, as mortal as we are ourselves. Geoffrey O’Brien once posited that the act of viewing a film plunges the spectator into a world of endless self-references and permutations, in which one inhabits a world populated by, among other things,

[The Battleship] Potemkin (4), Charlie Chaplin in drag, Filipino horror movies about mad surgeons, animated maps tracking the pincer movements of [Field Marshall] Rommel’s Panzer divisions, Egyptian soap operas in which insanely jealous husbands weep for what seems like hours at a stretch, made-for-TV stories about hitchhikers and serial killers, a long row of seventy-minute cavalry westerns, Russian science fiction intercut with nude scenes shot on Long Island, the best of the Bowery Boys, an amateur bondage cassette filmed on location in a dentist’s office in Ronkonkoma, They Drive by Night [Raoul Walsh, 1940], All This, and Heaven Too [Anatole Litvak, 1940], The Barkleys of Broadway [Charles Waters, 1949], Hindi religious musicals, Japanese gangster movies, countless adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters, L’Avventura [Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960], The Gene Krupa Story [Don Weis, 1959], [La Noche del terror ciego (The] Night of the Blind Dead [Amando de Ossorio, 1971], Betty Boop cartoons with color added, touristic documentation of Calcutta and Isfahan, a Bulgarian punk band captured live, and the complete photoplays of Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, and Veronica Lake. (5)

For O’Brien, viewing these images accomplishes one thing above all others: it provides “minimal proof that you were not dead” (6). But these images, now accessible to you primarily through the scan lines of a flat-screen television, on DVD or BluRay DVD, exist at a distance, separated from the faces and places that created their phantom existence. A digital copy is a copy of a copy, transformed into another medium, and yet more concrete than the presence of the original negative of the film itself, stored in a different vault miles below the surface of the earth, indifferently awaiting revival, retrieval, transfer or oblivion. Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol’s right-hand man during his most prolific period in the early-to-mid 1960s, noted of his own cinematographic work in 1989, long after Warhol’s Factory had vanished, that the most mundane images often held unexpected resonance for him, noting that in the archival process, “I discovered images I would not have seriously considered at the time of having made them. But I truly believe photographs have [an] innate and unique ability to take on new significance with age.” (7)

And yet, as Usai argues, even as he venerates the images that informed the interior landscape of his youth, “nostalgia in any form gives me the creeps. Brooding over the past bores me to death” (8), a paradoxical stance to take when he simultaneously admits that “an archive for moving images will end as a kind of museum – in the sense we currently give that term of an asylum for cultural artifacts” (9). As a medium, the cinema, whether digital or filmic, has always thrived on, and actively sought out, agencies of dramatic and transformative change. Paper film gave way to cellulose nitrate, and then to “safety film”; black and white has fallen to colour film, silence has given way to multidimensional stereophonic sound, digitally recorded for Dolby playback. Yet it seems at each juncture in this evolutionary parade that it is the critics and theoreticians of the medium that are most resistant to change, as when Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp premiered in three-step Technicolor in 1935 to one critic’s comment that

the total impression is one of a brass band in color rather than a well-modulated symphony […] As long as color in film has the quality of a gaudy calendar lithograph, there is no future for it, artistically, except in the embellishment of […] the animated cartoon

while producer Walter Wanger enthused “color is just as inevitable as speech. I don’t believe that one black-and-white picture will be produced four years hence”, while Samuel Goldwyn announced that all his new pictures would be made in Technicolor, predicting that “black and whites soon would be as rare as silent films” (10).

VCRs, along with a host of other factors, eventually killed drive-ins, making it possible to view a film at home with ease and convenience; DVDs wiped the VHS format out of existence a few years after their introduction. In the same fashion, second-run theatres were also killed off by the burgeoning DVD market, as the window between VHS and the theatrical release of a film and its appearance on DVD dwindled into nonexistence. And yet, as the public audience for 20^th century cinema film becomes increasingly specialized and narrowly segmented, to the point that American Blockbuster stores no longer even bother with a token “classics” section – even such reliable standbys as Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) are ignored in most of the chain’s stores – for those who embrace the past a wider range of films has become available. Often these DVDs go out of print in a matter of months, so one must purchase them immediately upon their release, as fetish objects that also have a temporal existence of their own, and a thriving bootleg “industry” exists as well, making copies of all but the most fugitive films available to the private collector.

In 2001, I wrote an essay entitled “Twenty-five Reasons Why It’s All Over”, which argued that the cinema, as we had grown up with it, had been altered so drastically so as to be a different medium altogether, as the combatant result of the collapse of theatrical distribution as an across the board “given” for all 35mm films, the ever-rising bottom line, the tyranny of teen audiences and hyperconglomerates driven to satisfy the greatest number of viewers with the least amount of risk, the “lock out” of foreign films from US audiences except in a few major cities, and numerous other factors. While all of this is demonstrably true, it now strikes me as profoundly beside the point. The digital reinvention of the cinema is every bit as revolutionary as the dawn of cinema itself, and it comes with an entirely new set of rules and expectations. While James Cameron and George Lucas may embrace these new tools for more superficial ends, and the medium will never be any more democratic than it has been historically, newer works continue to pop up on the margins of moving-image discourse, created by filmmakers who simply do not care if their images are captured on film, digital tape, or a hard drive, so long as their phantom vision reaches the screen – the screen of your plasma television, the screen of your local multiplex, the screen of your cell phone.

Just as a generation in the 1960s celebrated the inherent “funkiness” of the 16mm image, especially when blown up to 35mm, as being somehow more “raw” and “real” than its slicker cinematographic counterpart, the digital generation is comfortable with the roughness of low-end digital video, and hails the “water marks” of cell phone footage and YouTube downloads as artistic cultural artefacts. In addition, a South Korean company has developed a miniature laser video projector that can fit into mobile phones and digital cameras. In April 2006, the Iljin Display Company publicly demonstrated various prototypes of a number of mini-size video projectors built directly into mobile phones. By the end of 2007, if not before, they will be on the market. Using this technology, users can project photos and video images on the wall from the built-in projector, making movies truly portable, downloaded through one’s phone and projected at a moment’s notice. Who needs to go to the movies anymore when you can simply carry it with you? This is yet another example of cross-platforming, which demonstrates that the theatrical film experience is being faced with numerous alternative delivery systems. (11)

As A. O. Scott and David Denby noted in two separate articles that appeared almost simultaneously in, respectively, The New York Times and The New Yorker, young viewers today are, in Scott’s words, “platform agnostic, perfectly happy to consume moving pictures wherever they pop up – in the living room, on the laptop, in the car, on the cell phone – without assigning priority among the various forms” (12). While Scott is, in his own words, an “unapologetic adherent” (13) to standard theatrical presentation as the preferred medium of choice for movie-going, his children have opened up for him an entirely new way of seeing films, whether mainstream contemporary films or canonical classics. With a house full of DVDs, Scott’s son and daughter, aged 10 and 7, mix the past and the present with impunity, cross-platforming between Turner Classic Movies, iPod downloads, DVDs and trips to revival houses to see older films on the big screen. As Scott noted of the experience of taking his children to see an older film,

‘Why is he purple?’ my daughter asked in the middle of West Side Story [Robert Wise, 1961], noticing the effects of an aging Technicolor print on Tony’s face. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [John Ford, 1961] the tint would periodically switch from sepia to silver and back again. My son, noting each shift, wanted to know why it was happening: a question about aesthetics that I could only answer with a whispered lecture about chemistry. Most of the old movies he had seen were delivered by means of new technology; this one was old in the physical as well as the cultural sense.

What he made of it I don’t know. (He was amused that Lee Marvin, as the titular villain, calls Jimmy Stewart’s character ‘dude.’) But he watched with an unusual intentness, the same quality of attention he brought to Monty Python and the Holy Grail [Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975], Oliver! [Carol Reed, 1968] and [Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu (]Samurai Rebellion [Masaki Kobayashi, 1967], some of the other stops on our haphazard tour of movie history. I’m convinced that these films’ beguiling strangeness was magnified by the experience of seeing them away from home and its distractions, with the whir of the projector faintly audible in the background and motes of dust suspended in the path from projector to screen. (14)

And yet Scott’s son would never have had this experience if his father hadn’t bothered to take him to the cinema; even as an older teen, he probably would be more likely to seek out the latest Indiana Jones sequel over a 1962 black-and-white film by John Ford. For the generation of students who now are involved in cinema as both a critical and/or active pursuit, the digitisation of the cinema is an accomplished fact. Some younger artists seemingly side with Scott in his preference for conventional filmic projection, a “museum format” if ever there was one. As Melissa Gronlund comments of some of these new image-makers:

Hollywood pictures, newsreels and documentaries, film stock, cameras and projectors and the auditorium space itself have become the focal point for several artists’ works – particularly since celluloid has come under threat from digital technology. The collaborative Al and Al are using their residency at FACT in Liverpool to transform a defunct train station into a bluescreen studio. In Kodak (2006) Tacita Dean filmed the last standard 16-millimeter film factory in France on the final five rolls of stock the factory produced. At Cerith Wyn Evans’ show at London’s ICA in 2005 a bulky 35-[mm] film projector screened a blank film, tracking the deterioration of the celluloid to create a changing abstraction of scratches and tears. (15)

Such an act memorialises the past of cinema, even as the industry itself rushes to become a part of the new digital domain. Barry Meyer, the chairman and C. E. O. of Warner Brothers, sums the current situation up in two sentences: “Digital distribution is easy, ubiquitous, and inexpensive. We have to adapt, or we’ll become dinosaurs.” (16) John Fitman, president of NATO (the National Association of Theater Owners), is even more direct, noting that

we’re competing with the high-tech entertainment crowd, and we’re using technology in theaters that’s a hundred years old. We need to modernize existing theaters, and tear down old ones at the same rate […] In ten years, I doubt there will be any more film. (17)

Superman Returns

Critics Nathan Lee, Kent Jones and Paul Arthur concur, noting that Superman Returns (Bryan Singer), Apocalypto (Mel Gibson), A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman), Flyboys (Tony Bill), Miami Vice (Michael Mann) and Click (Frank Coraci), all released in 2006,

have one thing in common: they were all shot in high-def [digital video]. And no one blinked. All the huffing and puffing about the purity of 35mm now feels very 2003 […] all things considered, [2006] may have been the year when film and video became indistinguishable. (18)

It’s true that all these films were transferred from digital high-definition video to 35mm for conventional theatrical release, but that's simply a holdover from the past. Soon high definition will be projected in theatres worldwide in their original production format, and conventional film production will become, for better or worse, a thing of the past, a museum format.

There is another new development in the area of theatrical moving-image exhibition related to our discussion here, which shoots off in new and interesting directions. In Madrid, Spain, theatre owners are discovering that conventional films, no matter what their format (digital or film), or genre, are failing to attract all-important younger viewers. Thus, a new theatre, Cinegames, has opened in Madrid, offering theatre-screen-size video gaming for a predominantly male audience. “Forget the pathetic speakers of a PC or television!” exhorts one advertisement for the new facility. “Come feel the sound that puts you at the center of the action!” For a mere 3 Euros, or about $4, much cheaper than a conventional movie admission, audience participants engage in spirited group contests of World of Warcraft and other popular videogames, projected on a giant cinema screen (19).

As described by one observer, the resulting environment is

a hybrid movie theater with all the digital fire and fury of a video game: fog, black light, flashing green lasers, high definition digital projectors, vibrating seats, game pads, and dozens of 17-inch screens attached to individual chairs (20)

to monitor each person’s game play, while the combined contest plays out on a huge screen in the front of the auditorium. “We're trying this concept because there are so many theaters in Spain, and admissions are down. We have to offer new products”, notes Enrique Martinez, proprietor of Cinegames.

We see the future with multiplexes with five screens, one for the traditional Hollywood spectaculars and the others for screens for video halls and 3-D. That’s the next step. (21)

Similar facilities throughout Europe and North America are scheduled to open throughout 2007, and the model seems to be working quite well, although it skews the audience almost entirely to “young men in their late teens and 20s”, while “a few […] female supporters […] paid 1 euro each to watch the action”, but not to participate (22).

Whether or not this will become a major new audience model remains to be seen. Big-screen video gaming may go the way of 3-D movies and Cinerama, or it may become a solid niche market appealing to a younger audience. But while the “platform” of film may vanish, I would argue that, for most audiences, the “films” themselves will remain, and audiences, now adjusted to viewing moving images in a variety of different ways, will still want to see their dreams and desires projected on a large screen for the visceral thrill of the spectacle, as well as the communal aspect inherent in any public performance. Film is indeed disappearing, but movies are not. If anything, they are more robust than ever, and are shot in a multiplicity of formats that boggle the mind; analogue video, digital video, conventional film, high definition video, on cell phones and pocket-size, hard-drive, fixed-focus, auto-exposure cameras, in 16mm, 35mm, 70 mm and a host of other platforms now just emerging from the workshop of image making.

For those of us who see the cinema as a vast tapestry of films and filmmakers covering more than 100 years of cinema from all over the world, the use of digital technology is a plus because it allows us to access the images of the past with ease and efficiency. For those who know only the cinema of the present, pure Hollywood product for the most part, it nevertheless puts the tools of production into the hands of the rawest enthusiast, anyone capable of shooting a video and downloading it on YouTube or Current TV. The literally hundreds of thousands of clips now on the web at Google, Yahoo and other sites (many of them lifted from existing films and television programs) present an inchoate glut of imagery that resembles a new forest of the imagination. This thicket of conflicting images, both homebrew and borrowed, reminds me of the British filmmaker Anthony Scott’s conceptual feature film, The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the Whole Wide World (1969), which represented a similar cacophony of images to its viewers nearly forty years ago, entirely prefiguring our current image overload. As described by David Curtis, the film

consist[ed] […] of adverts, complete and incomplete sequences from feature films, out-takes, sound-only film, home-movie material and so on. Often a shot or a whole sequence will repeat ad nauseam, sometimes whole lengths of film appear upside down and running backwards […] By rearranging familiar material into new and often absurd relationships, the viewer’s traditional dependence on continuity is rudely interrupted, and in that disturbed state, some kind of re-evaluation of the material shown (either to its advantage or to its detriment) is inevitable. (23)

This same sort of “re-evaluation of the material shown” is now taking place on a much larger scale, larger than nearly anyone could have conceived of even five years ago. Film is disappearing, but in its place a new platform has emerged, which can comfortably support all previously existing formats. As with all such previous technological shifts in moving image study and production, a host of new æsthetic and practical considerations thus sweep to the fore. Is a digital copy of a film still a film? It is, and it isn’t. Is the digital image preferable to the filmic image, or the other way around? It’s clearly a matter of personal opinion.

The archival concerns raised by the digital shift are many and varied, but as Val Lewton observed in the 1940s of his own work in film, making movies “is like writing on water”. Some images will survive, others will not. I would argue that the digitisation of our visual culture will lead to the further preservation of its filmic source materials, rather than the other way around. With a whole new market opening up for these films of the past, the master negatives are being taken out of the vault and digitally transferred for popular conservation, with one especially desirable side effect; newer audiences now know of the film’s existence. Entombed in 16mm and 35mm frames for projection equipment that is becoming less and less prevalent (especially in the case of 16mm), these films might otherwise never reach a 21^st century audience. Perhaps film isn’t disappearing after all. Perhaps it is coming back to life.