IV

"stood revealed in its toilsome length, from the killing of the animal and the trying of the fat to the making of wicks and dipping of candles." 63 This was not nostalgia for an earlier form of light at a time when gas and electricity were already providing illumination in much simpler fashion; it was to make the young generation relive the cognitive thrust and the physical experimentation necessary to the progressive conquest of night by human beings. Similarly, to materialize Griffith's impatience with what was then the standard way of staging, is to confront the entire issue of what a representation is, maybe even perceive alternatives that were abandoned as impractical at the time for one reason or another. Such an exercise makes the history of cinema come alive, it makes it possible to revisit the past, not as a mausoleum but as a center of active research. What can be done with Griffith can of course also apply to Eisenstein, Welles, Godard, Janczo, Akerman, Greenaway, any director who became dissatisfied with staging as it was done in his/her days, producing a reformulation that expanded the limits of the medium as a result. In such a re-creation, the past is revisited as present, a novel insight is gained about the evolution of film, and the present way of staging can be experienced not as an acme of perfection but as a temporary construct that is bound to continue to evolve.
X
A last point about Dewey's philosophy brings us back to the relation between film schools and the industry. As mentioned earlier, Dewey was concerned about the ability of the democratic state to renew itself. He therefore looked at schools as places where traditions, conventions, beliefs of all kinds could be explicated, then debated with a view toward their amelioration. To do the job, the school he had in mind needed to nurture a new kind of community, one in which the typical hierarchies operating in the outside world would not be mindlessly duplicated. In like manner, film schools should neither operate as little studios nor duplicate fixed industrial rules. There is nothing sacred indeed about the working arrangements that normally control Hollywood shooting. Most importantly, film schools should never, ever force students to compete against each other in order to get their projects produced by the department.64 This destroys the chance to create a unique community of fellows who learn, share, and grow together. Second, there is no reason why someone working as a grip should not be able to turn to the director at any point during a shoot and

 



Film Production Theory2000
Film Production Theory2000
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 126

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