Matthew Mah disagrees that the camera can be a narrator. For him, a narrator must be biased. >However, we have the camera. The camera captures everything, >and we have to assume that it is non-biased. I used to feel this way but not after seven years of structural French Metzian film theory: the camera itself may not be a lone narrator -- that is, you may have to take the whole filmmaking system into account, but the camera, along with the sound recording equipment, the projector, the screen and the theatre etc., offer something to be seen, give us a window, create an intrigue, and this is a narrator's function. You cannot avoid a narrator. Moreover, a camera is so heavily biased -- the camera does not "capture everything": it frames a very narrow angle, forcing our attention, manipulating us to notice certain details, to see through a character's eyes, or not, to look far, to look close, to pan away. The camera does not naively open a window onto a pre-existant world. It creates that world. We cannot escape it. Noone is immune. -Pip Chodorov ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]