Materialist Film PDF
Preview Materialist Film
MATERIALIST FILM Peter Gidal ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: CINEMA * ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: CINEMA Volume 13 MATERIALIST FILM This page intentionally left blank MATERIALIST FILM PETER GIDAL Q Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1989 This edition first published in 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business O 1989 Peter Gidal All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-415-83865-8 (Set) elSBN: 978-1-315-85201-0 (Set) ISBN: 978-0-415-72776-1 (Volume 13) cISBN: 978-1-315-85204-1 (Volume 13) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this book but points out that some imperfections from the original may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. Materialist Film Peter Gidal R London and New York First published in 1989 by Rout ledge 11 New Fetter Lane. London EC4P 4EE 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001 Reprinted 1990 © 1989 Peter Gidal Typeset by Columns of Reading Printed in Great Britain by T] Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Gidal, Peter Materialist film. 1. Experimental cinema films I. Title 791.43 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gidal, Peter. Materialist film / Peter Gidal. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Experimental films—History of criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.E96G53 1989 791.43'01—del 9 88-15705 CIP ISBN 0-415-00382-2 For Therese Oulton every thought, thought through We stood still to see the other cleft of Malebolge and the other vain lamentings; and I found it marvellously dark. (Dante, The Inferno) When you say experimental film is about trying to understand the relationship between an object (in this case an image) and its name, how we come to know what we see, questioning the division of reality into discrete entities, what are you questioning about images? Images are not concepts, so how does one go about questioning them? (Christine Delphy, Interview with Lisa Cartwright, Undercut) Everything is optics. (Nietzsche, Complete Letters) Contents Acknowledgements ix Illustrations xi Introduction xiii 1 The one to one relation between viewer and viewed 1 Kurt Kren, Trees in Autumn (1960) Germaine Dulac, Etude Cinematographique sur une Arabesque (1929) 2 The concept of arbitrariness 11 3 Implicating materialism with physicality 15 4 Presence 16 5 Content 18 6 The subject 18 7 Film as film 20 8 Perception versus knowledge 21 Peter Gidal, Condition of Illusion (1975) Straub/Huillet, Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene by Arnold Schdnberg (1975) 9 Fetishization of process 32 Mike Dunford, Still Life with Pear (1974) 10 Deconstruction 37 11 Deconstruction and sexuality 39 12 Denial of semioticity 44 Brecht, Kuhn, Doane, and Heath 13 Andy Warhol's Kitchen (1965) 51 vii
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