It's no longer about isolated moments but a stream of moments. Images flicker across the screen, your eyes, your brain: no longer stationary, the work now moves, quickly, steadily, relentlessly. It seems that the work of art's got legs. And so... [more]

It's no longer about isolated moments but a stream of moments. Images flicker across the screen, your eyes, your brain: no longer stationary, the work now moves, quickly, steadily, relentlessly. It seems that the work of art's got legs. And so artist and viewer are strewn into a new fray of complexity: how is this motion to cohere? Early film innovators such as Hans Richter sought cohesion through the rhythm of form; waves of images are punctuated by pulses of light. Things move -- and bring the viewer with them. Rhythms shift, forms flow, space morphs, all to become an entire calculus of light. But once narrative enters the realm,this filmic language must adapt; the vocabulary must grow. The pacing becomes that much more subtle and complex. The relentless flickering simultaneously demands the presentation of a story and a rhythmic experience. After all, how is it that flickerings of light tell us that time has elapsed, that it's a new day, that events elsewhere have taken place? An elaborate grammar of light emerges. The result is a vast and growing tropology of light. The director and editor become DJs of flickering images -- providing a coherent but happening party (if you'll extend the metaphor with us). Think of Blaxploitation's use of stills amidst an animated sequence, John Woo's sudden slowing of action, Steven Soderbergh's "scratching" of images during the romantic interlude of "Out of Sight," Scorcese's impeccable pacing as Ray Liotta enters the club through the kitchen in "Goodfellas." Like music, film is an art of motion and hence begs for rhythmic distribution, narrative or not. And like all new mediums -- if not all mediums, old and new -- film is a cannibal of visual tropes: Peter Greenaway uses film as a slide show of paintings and photographic stills; in "The Matrix" we see video games meet live figures; Woody Allen shamelessly pilfers the theatrical soliloquy and the gentle gestures of the short story; Wong Kar-Wai indulges the secret rhythms of desire, humor, and grace. Film is a great glowing belly, a metabolism of luminary projection. [show less]