The poetics and uses of fluvial landscapes throughout the history of cinema (original) (raw)
In Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998), Jean-Luc Godard opens up an avenue of thought concerning cinema (and the history of cinema) that consists in a dialogue between the forms present in the (cinemat- ographic) images and sounds of the 20th century. The French filmmaker breaks with a single and un- directional history of cinema, in order to show the existence of multiple histories which remain open and in a process of permanent re-writing. Godard’s approach, particularly his ”inter-images” thinking, is adopted here to propose a (microscopic) history of the cinema based on the visual motif of the river; i.e. a synecdochic approach that offers an alterna- tive way of considering cinema history. This history branches off into two: an individual one which is constructed on the basis of my memory (audiovis- ual) as spectator, and, at the same time, a collective one which is framed within a potential history of cinematographic forms. This (individual-collective) dialectic turns the journey proposed throughout this chapter into a work-in-progress in which the reader may establish a dialogue between their own images and the ones suggested: images that, as (derivative and fragmentary) meanders, trace a poten- tial panorama of the aesthetic and narrative uses that cinema has made of fluvial landscapes. Every one of the mutations or reinterpretations that the motif has gone through, since its origins up to today, are indicators of the evolution of cinematographic tech- niques and aesthetics.
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