The Pleasure Project: In Search of the Cinephilic Moment: Peter Rist

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

Peter Rist

Fantasies of Flight
Dumbo (Disney 1941)
Peter Pan (Disney 1953)

Formative Years
Scarface (Howard Hawks 1932)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles 1941)

Impossible Spaces, Impossible Time frames
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick 1968)
Tree of Life (Terrence Malick 2011)

Cinephilia or fantasy?

Peter Rist on Cinephilia.

More videos from Peter Rist in Read more...

Rist’s cinephilia is rooted in the image. He claims that what most attracts him to film is its “pictorial beauty,” which inspires awe. This precedence over the image, and fascination with the dream-like spaces offered by cinema, can be related to the ontological, spiritual approach to cinema as explored by André Bazin (1918-1958). Although Bazin is associated with realism (in his view that by means of mechanical process, the camera is able to capture reality), and this is not to say that Rist’s cinephilia is brought about by realist techniques per se (i.e. depth of field, long take), his theory relates back to the film image: to the techniques and pragmatics of cinema.

This counters Christian Metz’s approach to film which uses psychoanalysis and semiotics to understand the viewer’s fascination with the image. Rather than refer back to the film itself (how certain camera techniques function within the narrative), Metz proposes a type of understanding of the text that comes from reading against the grain: “[…] like the interpretation that goes back along the path of the dream-work, acting by nature in the manner of counter-current” (19).

A different cinephile: appreciation of image

A different cinephile: appreciation for image.

What do I think about film theory?