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Introduction |
Introduction What does it mean to take and offer an image from a film – to capture a frame from a DVD or video, to keep a rare or unusual still from a book or magazine, to point a camera at a TV screen, or to draw one’s impression of a special cinematic moment? Rouge likes the written word in all its creative, descriptive and analytical forms. But for a change, at the end of the year, we decided to 'put language in check' and ask our contributors to express themselves primarily with an image. The reflection upon what Raymond Bellour called 'the film stilled' has been going on for at least thirty years. Does the single frame or photogram, when it alights upon a gesture, shadow or superimposition unnoticed by the eye in normal viewing circumstances, unearth a hidden meaning, a secret, other film? Can an image suggest, illustrate – even supplant – the written analysis of an entire film? Does it place in relief something 'meta-cinematic' about the respective positions of spectator, image and screen? Or is the film stilled an altogether new, different object – a gesture of artistic appropriation that wrenches its materials from the ruins of a 'lost object', as Godard does with the multitude of clips in his Histoire(s) du cinéma? It is, ultimately, a false contest to oppose the 'purity' or infinite openness of the Image against the rational solidity of the Word. Images inevitably carry their legends – actual or virtual – and words are full of image-traces. Images can be discursive, and language can be mysterious. The experiment of this issue of Rouge is simply to observe, from a different angle, the interaction of words and images, films and ideas. Helen Bandis, Adrian Martin, Grant McDonald
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