Film and Culture
Seandor Szeles | 02.Apr.09
Individuals who put a lot of their time and effort into a craft often find asking themselves: why? Why tell stories in a visual way? Why imagine or recreate something from the real world, where objectivity is inherent, and craft it into a story with a camera or a computer?
The answer best explains itself in negative form. Without the potential to see life on a screen, we only have real life as it is. We see people walking and scratching their heads and living and dying and turning against one another. In the objective real world, people from around the world remain in their separate bins, isolated from the other flavors of man-kind and labeled appropriately. The objective outside world is what it is.
Any film, documentary or fiction, scoops reality out of its earthly dish and gently dumps it onto a nice neat screen. It shapes it with narrative form, a form which through its mere structure parallels the loss of Eden, the loss of identity, and the quest to find it again. Then it pummels reality by doing something other than allowing for it to bask in its untouched form.
It assigns meaning.
When we decide to point a camera at something we assign human meaning to the world. Realism tries its best to take this reality and form it into a pure, untouched arrangement of authenticity. Utilizing long-shots and real settings, it hopes for what film critic Andrew Brazin calls a "democracy of perception", where the viewer assigns meaning to the world rather than the filmmaker. Yet despite all of its attempts at objectivity, realism is only ever effective when it captures not only the relatable and genuine, but the human aspect of life which reaches beyond the mundane, calling upon our instincts to think about possibilities rather than inevitabilities.
"La Strada" is a film where the spoken words play second fiddle to the beautiful acting of Guiletta Massina, a former mime, whose face and essence carry the film
When we enter the world of cinema, the world isn't just what it is. It is what a film-maker makes it. Realism is effective because despite the realities of poverty, war, and the loss of individual identity it puts on display, film conjures up something different; possibility, a difference which is all the more potent when it grows out of a setting we can see ourselves in.
Filming life would not be worth our time if it did not assign meaning to the meaningless. Frederico Fellini's neo-realist film "La Strada" would not be worth watching if the hard up street urchin didn't see the potential for a meaningful, forward moving life despite her paralytic existence. But we find purpose in the film's winding, wondering streets and by traveling them, the world's eyes were opened to Italy's post-World War II plight. By interpreting Italy's realities in a film where we barely, if ever, notice his technique, Fellini's meaning transcends the structure of the cinema. This allows for his story to be expressed in a way which relies on pure substance, a way which we understand and appreciate years later in a different social context.
The same thing holds for non-fiction. Take "Born into Brothels", Zana Briski's moving documentary which follows her photography lessons with the children of Calcutta's red-light district. Despite the pain of their reality, Briski brings something new to the picture. When we realized that some of the talented children would never leave, would our eyes have watered if there hadn't been the possibility of an exodus?
This is what culture is. Adding our individual touches on reality is necessary because despite manifesting itself in different flavors, humanity is the one thing we've all got. As an American watching Briski's documentary, I watched children from a completely different social, economic, and cultural background make the same face getting tested for AIDS that my nephew does when he gets his flu vaccination. Visual language doesn't trap ideas as text does. Anyone can recognize that look-away, jerk your knee sensation of getting a shot.
We need different flavors of humanity and should bask in the distinctions that make each culture unique. Still, older forms of communication are perilously isolating. Only one person reads a book at a time. With film, people around the world watch completely different looking people facing extremely different circumstances with the same attitudes and contradictions that we all have. It is then that we realize that no matter where or why you're getting a shot, a needle is a scary thing to have pointed your way. If culture is different from one place to another, its simply universal human needs specialized for a particular association of humans. Film has the potential to reverse this. We watch films in groups. We understand meaning even if we can't understand the words.
"La Strada" is a film where the spoken words play second fiddle to the beautiful acting of Guiletta Massina, a former mime, whose face and essence carry the film. Her eyes, her facial expressions, and her movement create what the poet Girard Manley Hopkins called "inscape", the inherent and distinct quality of a thing which words can only attempt to reproduce. This essence, which film has the potential to capture, cannot be confused with other abstractions or cognitive reflections. It is purely mystical. It is the thing we all have in common. It is not a psychological, but a spiritual place we share.
Film has the potential to show viewers not only what might be, but what they might be a part of. Film is not just me and a book, its us and a screen. Its potential for universal visuality and mass reception gives film the potential to break free from cultural specialization and form something larger, what Marshall McLuhan calls a "global village", or a collective conscious formed around a mutual understanding of how to interpret meaning from modern media. With film, for the first time since we've started, we have a way of imagining which connects us beyond words, actions, or narrative structure. With truly good art, we see not the tools with which film assigns meaning to the world, but a truth which transcends the structure through which we see them, ultimately pointing beyond itself to something we don't quite understand, but can't deny.
The answer best explains itself in negative form. Without the potential to see life on a screen, we only have real life as it is. We see people walking and scratching their heads and living and dying and turning against one another. In the objective real world, people from around the world remain in their separate bins, isolated from the other flavors of man-kind and labeled appropriately. The objective outside world is what it is.
Any film, documentary or fiction, scoops reality out of its earthly dish and gently dumps it onto a nice neat screen. It shapes it with narrative form, a form which through its mere structure parallels the loss of Eden, the loss of identity, and the quest to find it again. Then it pummels reality by doing something other than allowing for it to bask in its untouched form.
It assigns meaning.
When we decide to point a camera at something we assign human meaning to the world. Realism tries its best to take this reality and form it into a pure, untouched arrangement of authenticity. Utilizing long-shots and real settings, it hopes for what film critic Andrew Brazin calls a "democracy of perception", where the viewer assigns meaning to the world rather than the filmmaker. Yet despite all of its attempts at objectivity, realism is only ever effective when it captures not only the relatable and genuine, but the human aspect of life which reaches beyond the mundane, calling upon our instincts to think about possibilities rather than inevitabilities.
"La Strada" is a film where the spoken words play second fiddle to the beautiful acting of Guiletta Massina, a former mime, whose face and essence carry the film
When we enter the world of cinema, the world isn't just what it is. It is what a film-maker makes it. Realism is effective because despite the realities of poverty, war, and the loss of individual identity it puts on display, film conjures up something different; possibility, a difference which is all the more potent when it grows out of a setting we can see ourselves in.
Filming life would not be worth our time if it did not assign meaning to the meaningless. Frederico Fellini's neo-realist film "La Strada" would not be worth watching if the hard up street urchin didn't see the potential for a meaningful, forward moving life despite her paralytic existence. But we find purpose in the film's winding, wondering streets and by traveling them, the world's eyes were opened to Italy's post-World War II plight. By interpreting Italy's realities in a film where we barely, if ever, notice his technique, Fellini's meaning transcends the structure of the cinema. This allows for his story to be expressed in a way which relies on pure substance, a way which we understand and appreciate years later in a different social context.
The same thing holds for non-fiction. Take "Born into Brothels", Zana Briski's moving documentary which follows her photography lessons with the children of Calcutta's red-light district. Despite the pain of their reality, Briski brings something new to the picture. When we realized that some of the talented children would never leave, would our eyes have watered if there hadn't been the possibility of an exodus?
This is what culture is. Adding our individual touches on reality is necessary because despite manifesting itself in different flavors, humanity is the one thing we've all got. As an American watching Briski's documentary, I watched children from a completely different social, economic, and cultural background make the same face getting tested for AIDS that my nephew does when he gets his flu vaccination. Visual language doesn't trap ideas as text does. Anyone can recognize that look-away, jerk your knee sensation of getting a shot.
We need different flavors of humanity and should bask in the distinctions that make each culture unique. Still, older forms of communication are perilously isolating. Only one person reads a book at a time. With film, people around the world watch completely different looking people facing extremely different circumstances with the same attitudes and contradictions that we all have. It is then that we realize that no matter where or why you're getting a shot, a needle is a scary thing to have pointed your way. If culture is different from one place to another, its simply universal human needs specialized for a particular association of humans. Film has the potential to reverse this. We watch films in groups. We understand meaning even if we can't understand the words.
"La Strada" is a film where the spoken words play second fiddle to the beautiful acting of Guiletta Massina, a former mime, whose face and essence carry the film. Her eyes, her facial expressions, and her movement create what the poet Girard Manley Hopkins called "inscape", the inherent and distinct quality of a thing which words can only attempt to reproduce. This essence, which film has the potential to capture, cannot be confused with other abstractions or cognitive reflections. It is purely mystical. It is the thing we all have in common. It is not a psychological, but a spiritual place we share.
Film has the potential to show viewers not only what might be, but what they might be a part of. Film is not just me and a book, its us and a screen. Its potential for universal visuality and mass reception gives film the potential to break free from cultural specialization and form something larger, what Marshall McLuhan calls a "global village", or a collective conscious formed around a mutual understanding of how to interpret meaning from modern media. With film, for the first time since we've started, we have a way of imagining which connects us beyond words, actions, or narrative structure. With truly good art, we see not the tools with which film assigns meaning to the world, but a truth which transcends the structure through which we see them, ultimately pointing beyond itself to something we don't quite understand, but can't deny.
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1. Posted on 15.Jun.09 From: mb
Born Into Brothels Kids Sue Filmmakers! (Calcutta newspaper, August 2008)
Yes, it's true.
Born Into Brothels is a story of lies, half truths, distortions and exploitation. I invite you to read the newest blog and numerous other articles written on the hidden story behind the Hollywood-blessed "documentary." You read, you decide. It's your call.
The blog can be found at http://bornintobrothelslies.blogspot.com
2. Posted on 04.Apr.09 From: agomonee
A wonderful piece of thought. The connect that reel can have with real is something transcendental. Every time we watch a good film, we realise and applaud the possibility of this connection, notwithstanding the fact that it is an oft-voiced thought. I'd also believe that even a xenophobic person would agree that universality is something our hearts open to. That's why we cry and laugh for someone of an alien dialect/language articulating thoughts on screen with as much passion as the ones in the language we speak.