Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
. . . a resident six year old required to know why I spent so many consecutive evenings at the bench with a film that was not my own. Because I don't understand it, I said, and he answered: 'You're not supposed to *understand* films, you're only supposed to *make* them.' It is as remedy for some such jejune superstition, I suspect, and as prophylaxis against the syndrome of manipulated, insentient valorization which it masks and sustains, that these speculations have been written during the intervening decade.' [1]
Perhaps he is being a bit hard on the boy. But were the superstition in question confined to six-year-olds (a class of individuals known, if nothing else, for their uncanny ability to revise their own blunders) there would be little need for any remedy. Unfortunately, the better part of contemporary discourse on film continues to be afflicted by the unfortunate supposition that those who make films and those who understand them are by nature distinct groups.
--Matt Teichman / Prelude to the Philosophy of Hollis Frampton