So perhaps a new form of cinema demands a new form of writing about cinema? A form of writing as unexpected as the films themselves? Lev Manovich and others have written about the database structure of digital cinema. What would an indexical, archival mode of writing look like? Perhaps this new writing would turn upon uncanny connections and correspondences, only visible to us because so many films are available to us today, in so many forums. We are haunted by the cinematic past. Perhaps this new form of writing would embrace the irrational, the uncanny against the commodity logic of so much writing today about film.

Here are a series of images, one from Maya Deren's avant-garde film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), two from David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me, and one from The Ring:

In the digital archive, film becomes a series of unexpected correspondences and connections; in this case, perhaps Meshes of the Afternoon, Fire Walk With Me, and The Ring are part of a cycle, a cycle made visible by the very logic of the digital archive itself.

Comments

[Stu Willis]

I like it. A wiki of film criticism. I'm quite serious. :)

[McChris]

A wiki occurred to me, as well, but wikis are a little too univocal, merging n number of voices into a single page. A "nodal" system like Everything2 might be better allowing voices to disagree on the same page.

It's not for the same application, but I had an idea for a movie wiki here:
http://www.infobong.com/archives/003077.html#003077

[Jim Lafferty]

Funny you mention a wiki for film -- I'd written just the same thing before reading your comments, in reference to the above entry, on another film forum: "Kind of like a wikipedia reference of cinematic imagery -- that's pretty fascinating, as I often wonder what films I'm missing that I'd enjoy, given that there's so much world cinema that I have no reason to cross paths with."

I think you've hit on a good idea -- sort of like Godard's Histoires, which attempts to trace aesthetic history as the "right" way to teach film. It's an idea which still holds some sway over Godard, apparent in the "film lecture" scene in Notre Musique.

You should do it...

[Nick]

And also sort of like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project--his notes, jottings, quotes, etc. that taken together create some form of narrative. And yet, there's always the feeling that the supposed randomness of somthing like that is really old-fashioned order masquerading as chance. "Automatic writing." What would that look like? "Automatic film?"