by Rebecca Hernandez-Gerber
"’For us’ is the caveat that allows for a level of authenticity, to use that existential vocabulary, at the same moment as it guarantees a lack of finality. To what extent does the humanist framework encouraged by film festivals and the popular press not only steer our readings in selected directions but also obscure alternative readings or discourage their active pursuit?”
"’For us’ is the caveat that allows for a level of authenticity, to use that existential vocabulary, at the same moment as it guarantees a lack of finality. To what extent does the humanist framework encouraged by film festivals and the popular press not only steer our readings in selected directions but also obscure alternative readings or discourage their active pursuit?”
Bill Nichols' "Discovering
Form, Inferring Meaning" is focused on Iranian cinema, but many of the
lessons taken from the piece apply equally to all forms of cinema foreign to
us. Oftentimes, I have found it difficult to relate to the works of Western
writers commenting on cinemas outside their own views. This is simply not my
world, and the attitudes within it as as foreign to me as Iranian cinema is to
Nichols. However, I was pleased and intrigued to find that Nichols’ worked
posed a series of fascinating questions on how interpretation crosses borders,
and I found myself attempting to answer these difficult questions.
What first struck me was
the question of a humanist framework. Can we say that all film festivals and
the popular press steer the viewer in a particular direction? I’m unsure I
agree with this framework. Within the press are a range of opinions and
emotions that, while unified in their overall Western-viewpoint, remains
fragmented in their own unique experiences. It is possible that this framework
draws the viewer in a particular direction, but I would argue that they do not
discourage active pursuit. Quite the contrary, when the viewer encounters a viewpoint
contrary to their own, they are given pause and consider how their own viewpoints
relates to this dominant theory. The dissonance creates the possibility of
difference, one that all viewers may not choose to utilize but which
nonetheless remains open to all.
Looking at this question
in a different light, I begin to wonder at what, exactly, we define as a level
of authenticity. Interpretation of art never carries authenticity, no matter
how certain critics or institutions may attempt to stamp their own opinion as
such. It is fluid, transformative, influenced by culture and the moments that
shape our artistic temperament. To be confronted by festivals and press that
attempt to teach us what is or is not authentic, my response is never to take
such authenticity at face value. It is, instead, to question, to wonder, and to
search for a new truth that is only true for myself.
Perhaps this is the
purpose of divering form and inferring meaning from those cultural cinemas so
foreign to us. It is not a question of interpreting differences but at
discovering commonality, yet always reminding ourselves that this commonality
holds only as much authenticity as our own opinions: that is, paradoxically,
both everything and nothing at all.
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