What is Cinema?
From my perspective, we might as well ask “What is life?” for film, like life, is made of moments…moments in time, held aloft for our perusal, imprinted on our soul, and then brought back to us from time to time as a memory–by an event, a vision, a sound, an emotion. Any attempt at separation is therefore trivial–cinema is life, and life cinema: around us, beside us, inside us.
The cinema, then, is not to be consumed with haste; films are not to be digested simply as they unfold, like some plastic-wrapped fast-food. Created by light and celluloid, they live only in our minds and in our hearts–savored both during and after the fact…projected onto the screen and into our consciousness, where they are replayed over and over–continually rediscovered artifacts which are constantly changing us.
What, then, can we say, “Is a movie truly real? A memory? An event? A celluloid image?” The answer lies in the cinematic experience itself because here all is real. Nothing is impossible.
~Glen Norton, American Writer
Leave a note.