Context, purpose, and outline of project

In his essay “Through the Glass Darkly: Cinephilia Reconsidered,” Paul Willemen “identifies cinephilic pleasures as ‘something to do with what you perceive to be the privileged, pleasure-giving, fascinating moment of a relationship to what’s happening on screen’, a fetishising of fleeting details as opposed to examining the film as a whole.”

(from Jason Sperb and Scott Balcerzak’s “Introduction: Presence of Pleasure” in Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture, Vol. 1 p. 15)

The Pleasure Project is overseen by a group of film studies students (under the guise of Team Noir) who seek to explore the relationship between cinephilia and theory. If cinephilia is by definition a condition characterized by intense love for the cinema (suffix -philia Greek for friendly feeling toward or abnormal appetite or liking for), then where does film theory fit in? Does theoretical engagement impede pleasure or enhance it? Or does this knowledge encourage a different kind of pleasure (indeed, even inciting pleasure where none had existed before)?

Paul Willemen’s definition of the cinephilic’s “privileged, pleasure-giving, fascinating moment of a relationship to what’s happening on screen” is by no means a definitive rule or formula that can be used to locate the cinema-lover. This form of cinephilia is more of a starting point, a catalyst, to get people talking. If someone does not experience pleasure this way (through an either literal or mental replay of a particular moment in a film), then maybe he or she experiences it another way. Perhaps pleasure lies elsewhere: beyond fetishizing or passive viewing.

The interviews featured in this blog seek an elaboration on a defining cinephilic moment (as defined by the Willemen quote)

Monday, April 2, 2012

Masha Salazkina

An Immersive, “Transformative” Experience 
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky 1979)

VHS & Fetishism 
À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard 1960)

Cinephiliac moment: an aesthetic experience


Cinephiliac moment: an aesthetic experience.

More video's from Masha Salazkina in Read more... 


“The first blow against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions [...] is to free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment. There is no doubt that this destroys the satisfaction, pleasure giving and privilege of the “invisible guest,” and highlights how films have depended on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms.” – Laura Mulvey


Professor Salazkina describes her repeated viewing of Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de couffle (1959) as what became a ritualistic event. Of course, one should expect that the aesthetics of A bout de souffle to present aesthetic hazards to forms of spectatorship induced by traditional narrative cinema. Yet, Salazkina’s confessed impersonations of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg demonstrate the displacement of cinema from the film theatre, the seizing of agency by the viewer and the achievement of cinephilic pleasure separate from passive voyeurism.

By virtue of VHS and absence of the darkened theatre, film viewer’s not only gain unlimited access to films previously considered rare, but also repeated access. As such, the cinephilic moment is relocated from residing within the work itself and consequently steps into the personal life of the viewer who, in turn, becomes fully aware of their own visibility. This process presents a unique contradiction culminating with active rather than passive identification – as highlighted by Salazkina, the characters in A Bout de Souffle, appear to be doing the same thing. Perhaps Christian Metz is correct in saying that the viewer has to identify. However, the process of identification must consider ulterior routes and forms that acknowledge the specificity of cinematic style, viewing circumstances and cultural implications.





Cinephilic fetishism, reenactment and desire


Cinephilic fetishism, reenactment and desire .




   Qu'est-ce que c'est degueulasse?





Does theoretical engagement diminish  pleasure?


Does theoretical engagement diminishes cinephilic joy?


Nonetheless, if the cinephilic moment may be displaced, the question then becomes whether or not there are limitations to its displacement. Does Professor Salazkina drink Stella Artois?
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