From: Klaus W. Eisenlohr (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Mar 06 2006 - 04:00:39 PST
>
>
>It's going to be interesting to see what cinemas will
>be like in the future, I guess they won't even be
>cinemas like we know them now, what with live events
>and everything. It's when I think of things like that
>that sometimes I think I'd like to take a peek in the
>future and see what it is like. Good or bad, you know,
>just out of curiosity, whereas usually I have the good
>sense to not want to know! ;)
>
>love
>
>Freya
>
I think nobody mentioned so far, that film is
also a special SOCIAL experience. You sit in a
dark room with certain people to share an
experience with your senses and your intellect,
which is unique to other media. Digital media
does not need that space, and it mostly feels odd
to sit in a dark, calm space to watch video. Why
not go out, fetch a coffee and a snack and come
back, why not rewind a bit if you missed
something while talking to your neighbour? What I
mean is, video and other digital media has a
different social mind-set, and it might be that
setting up a dark room for a VIDEO screening
really is the nostalgic setting that some people
are talking about, here. (Setting up a "home
theatre" like it is now being promoted in all the
media departments of department stores picks up
on the same nostalgia, I feel).
On the other hand, the recent spread of the
microcinema idea really derives from the special
social experience people can have by watching
film and video. What is interesting in this
regard is, that the idea of microcinema includes
both film and video: here, this old(fashioned)
fight seems to be forgotten.
What comes to my mind as a parallel is that it
was DJs who sticked to these odd, old fashioned
black discs and who made the music industry still
producing LPs, and not the people who claimed
that the sound quality of the old medium is much
better than the compressed music on CD.
However, what we should not forget about is, that
culture is always about exclusion (excluding
other ideas, people, social groups or religions).
Especially the idea of avant-garde is an idea of
exclusion and receives a lot of its impetus
through the idea of having "better ideas" (than
the mainstream, the old guys... whatsoever). (One
of the reasons I feel odd about the American term
"avant-garde film", which had its exclusive hype
quite some time ago). Moreover, I feel that today
no group in the arts is more trying to protect
their exclusive rights and position than the
"digital community" and from their point of view
there is nothing more nostalgic than a screening.
(Which is funny in the sense that that discussion
was already going on in the 70's. And in certain
ways, the new hype of expanded media isn't it a
nostalgic idea?)
Best wishes from Berlin
Klaus
-- Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Osnabrücker Str. 25, D-10589 Berlin, Germany email: email suppressed hannover project: http://www.olgacity.de homepage: http://www.kw-eisenlohr.de and film production: http://www.richfilm.de phone: int.- 49 - 30 - 3409 5343 (BERLIN) __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.