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August 2002, Week 5

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Subject:
From:
Tim Shary <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 30 Aug 2002 18:20:35 -0400
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    I think that Darryl Wiggers and Leo Enticknap have presented quite
intelligent responses to the exaggerated claims of the death of "film".
(And I know this will be the second time in a week I've cited one of my own
articles on the list, but I do so in hopes that people will suggest other
previously published commentaries on this topic.)  In "Present Personal
Truths: The Alternative Phenomenology of Video in 'I've Heard the Mermaids
Singing'," (Wide Angle, Vol. 15, #3, July 1993), I concluded with these
remarks:

    Cinema remains intact, as it will remain after the electronic
technologies of video have been replaced by more sophisticated visual
devices.  Film itself may even become antiquated in this next century, but
cinema-- that is, the social and personal practice of watching images on a
screen-- will still influence human experience a thousand years from now,
just as paintings have merely moved from stone walls to canvas in the past
ten thousand years.... As video eventually fades into nostalgia and is
replaced by new technology, other media arts will also join the evolution of
cinema history, and new theories on production and reception will emerge
that will again change our perception of what we know as cinema.

    So having moved through film stocks to electronic tape to digital code
to whatever is next, I am confident that we will always find value in the
group theater and home screen experience of motion pictures.  If anything,
the personal cinema experience is what will change most, as we find more
ways to integrate more viewing screens into our daily lives.  When the day
comes that we can "load" media directly into our brains without the medium
of a screen-- and that day will come-- then that MAY change the social
experience of movies, but perhaps not even then.

    I'd write more, but it's a Friday night and I'm going out to see a
movie.

Dr. Timothy Shary
Assistant Professor of Screen Studies
Traina Center for the Arts
Clark University
Worcester, MA  01610
508-793-7285

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