Reflective writing on chat with Paul Coldwell

Festen - Thomas Vinterberg, Dogme 95

So yesterday I had a half an hour audio chat session with Professor Paul Coldwell about my research paper. It started alright - midway I got distracted and confused (the screaming kitten didn't help :)), and I think it ended OK. So here is where I got stuck:

Prof. Coldwell suggested that Cinema is growing and so is the sense of escapism. I wasn't sure about this but didn't know exactly how to back it up. By Chance! yesterday I found a lecture by Professor Jesse Schell about the rise of the need for realism. Some points I observed: In the midst of all this technological breakthrough, people are feeling that they are living in a 'fake' world, therefore yearning for "real" food, "reality" tv, "reality" in games and adverts. (Yet I still think that escapism seems to still be lurking in through all of this realism. It is an interesting mix of both. The safety of going back to something genuine and natural, and the excitement of the surreal. A technological representation of the natural perhaps.)

I then also looked at other points in time when this happened, in art especially - Pre-Raphaelites, the 60's Psychedelia. I still need to see what happened exactly in the film world but essentially it was pretty much the same pendulum style activity. From one extreme to another. Stretching something to the max and returning to something else.

I suppose then that it is in this day and age that going back to the natural seems to make so much sense, since we were never so far away from reality as we are now.

The more technological and virtual/digital we become, the more we want to get back to our roots (It's natural :)).

Jesse Schell specifies that this factor is called the concept of Authenticity, and if it is true, then there was never a better time for chance and database to combine and create filmmaking structures that are more relevant to today's culture.

So... currently updating my arguments, but moreso the conclusion which I still wasn't sure about up until yesterday.

More points to think about (as discussed with Paul Coldwell)
Sophie Calle - Figure to research
Max Ernst series - A woman with a thousand heads
Early cinema - Duchamp
Surrealism
Are people still going to the cinema & escapism