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filmmakers are unlikely to be incorporated by the dominant film industry — except in watered-down and more palatable forms — itis precisely those innovations which show that film is a living, changing art form... with a future.
Probably the most rapid changes, however, have not occurred in film practice, but in film theory. One example of the new directions in film theory is Peter Baxter's analysis of masochism and the “death instinct” in the relationship of the spectator to the film spectacle. Another is represented by Paisley Livingston's critique of Metz’s semiological answers to Bazin’s seminal question, “Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ?” Livingston’s emphasis on the social contexts of film viewing and the influence those contexts have on the “codes” of cinema, raises a number of questions about the nature of film that are only now being formulated and whose answers lie in the future of film theory.
If a single conclusion about film and its future can be drawn from the essays collected here, | think it could be summed up in Livingston's concluding remarks : “That the future of the cinema may not follow from its past, that the ‘essence’ of film may display radical change, means that there is no determined essence of film, no identity, no exact and conclusive answer to the question. Yet insofar as the cinema has been and continues to be determined, we must also continue to pose the question : what is cinema ?” If the future promises no definitive answer to that question, it seems certain to offer, at the very least, new contexts in which to ask it.
Montreal May 1983
Note
* Carol Rutters “Gearing Up for Tomorrow: New Technologies and Film Aesthetics” has been published in Cinema Canada, No. 89 (October 1982), pp. 22-23; an earlier version of Peter Harcourt’s essay in this collection appeared in Ciné-Tracts, No, 17 (Summer, Fall 1982), pp. 33-38; Seth Feldman’s “The Electronic Fable: Docudrama on Canadian Television” (which is not included here) is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming issue of Canadian Drama; and a modified version of Paisley Livingston's essay in this collection will appear in French in the forthcoming issue of Communication et Information.
Contributors
Peter Baxter is assistant professor, Film Studies, Queen's University.
Bruce Elder is an experimental filmmaker and teaches at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.
Peter Harcourt is a full professor, Film Studies, Carleton University.
Réal LaRochelle teaches cinema at the CEGEP Montmorency.
Paisley Livingston is assistant professor, department of English, McGill University.
Bill Nichols is chairman of Film Studies, Queen's University.
David Poole is the experimental film officer at the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre.
Carol A. Rutter is a student in cinema at Concordia University.
Hildegard F. Tiessen is an instructor, department of English, Wilfrid Laurier University and Paul Gerard Tiessen is associate professor, department of English, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Gene Walz is assistant professor and head of Film Studies at the University of Manitoba.
William C. Wees is associate professor, department of English, McGill University.