In Memoriam to the Cinema Palace

The following is the original, raw and unedited version of an article presented in the the 26th edition of OtherZine.  You can see the edited, presentable version here: http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/in-memoriam-to-the-cinema-palace/

The following represents a closer example of the writers voice, but it is also unpolished.  It includes the accompanying video that shows footage of the demolishing of the cinema described in the article.

“The death of cinema” is a term that is thrown around quite often.  British director Peter Greenaway said it came with the invention of the remote control (1983).  Susan Sontag suggested it had died in her article "A Century of Cinema" (1995).  Many cinephiles believe it died with the invention of video or at least when it completely took over cinemas.

For me cinema died today.  Not with any conversion or transition of our beloved images, but with the erasure of my first movie palace.  The Park Theatre, in Menlo Park, California, was 66 years old when the property owner decided it should be flattened and turned into office buildings.  That might not seem very old, but for California architecture that is ample time especially considering the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

Progress is haunting.  In one regard things change for the better.  Technology advances to make things easier, cheaper and more accessible, but not always.  Sometimes progress squashes beauty.  To what extent do we let progress determine our lives?  This was a question that spun around my head 11 years ago when the Park first closed it’s doors as a cinema to the public and now the wound has reopened and flows with blood once more.

Situations like this really make me wonder if the invisible decisions made by our current form of economy are really in line with our values.  When the pursuit of profit goes before culture, history and community it loses purpose.  Environment is a beast of a topic.  Books and artwork are archived.  Human lives are protected.  Buildings are quite different.  With property, or more specifically, buildings it is the owner that decides the fate.  A building, like a painting, can be protected, but this involves an active city council, experts and an interested community.  If someone possesses property of historic significance that they do not appreciate then why do they bother owning it?

The Dorothy Chandler Pavillion is only 50 years old and yet the Los Angeles Conservancy chose it to be apart of their Last Remaining Seats film series to recognize it’s historic significance.  The Park is it’s senior by 16 years and it left without a whisper.  However it was brilliantly orchestrated by the owner, Howard Crittenden.  Almost mysteriously so for me.  Eleven years ago he closed it’s doors to the protests of Landmark Theatres, who ran the cinema, and a few local residents.  I left for college to New York and later Los Angeles.  Upon my return to the Bay Area and after so many had forgotten and so much neglect to the building Mr. Crittenden decided to destroy the Park.  A completely unintended last laugh.

“In a critique of the lamentable state of American cities, there can be no appeal to the nostalgia for lost traditions and ways of life; our appeal can be only to the future.  This should not necessarily excite optimism.” - James Brook (“Remarks on the Poetic Transformation of San Francisco”)

In an essay on the development and short history of US cities, San Francisco in particular, Mr. Brook makes reference to a man named Nicholas Calas a European writer who immigrated to New York City in the 1940’s.  Having come from the old world with endless history in the walls of buildings and the floor beneath his feet he couldn’t stop writing about how bizarre of a hogpog construction that was the Big Apple.  A city that came from nowhere and grew not from history, culture or organic construction, but from market flow.  In many ways Calas was correct that in 1940 New York was still quite young and San Francisco even younger.  Buildings and places develop their true characters only after their initial purpose has waned.  

In previous times humankind's constructions were made to outlive their makers as a way to personify the power and creation of that period.  Now real estate developers are driven by profit, which is driven by current market trends.  It is as if the moment construction is complete that a building is already a burden upon the owner for not being enough of a cash-cow.  California is perpetually changing with the tides.  Landmarks barely have a chance to find their true personalities before they are razed and forgotten.  As Brook mentions this leaves us with only the ability to look to the future.

Calas believed that the poetry of a city could be found in the forgotten spaces and "flow" from one wondering place to the next.  The accidental or intentional additions to a sidewalk that leads to a building that's followed by a path through a park.  This is what I saw in the Park Theatre.  After 50 years of movie goers, employees, accidents, violence and love.  It was in the walls.

If enough people love something can it ever be killed?

In an age where most people are regretting the slow fade out of the medium of celluloid film, for me, this overrated argument takes a back seat to the erasure of the elegant classic movie palaces that are now on the verge of extinction.  This is a thought that runs through my mind knowing that Mr. Crittenden is also the owner of the last remaining classic cinema palace in Menlo Park, the Guild; due to turn 90 in just about two years from now.  Will we be lamenting the destruction of that elegant construction in ten years time?

Kuchar in 3-D

So, a couple years ago the Hollywood King of 3-D, Ray Zone, gave the Godfather of Queer Cinema, Mike Kuchar, a 3-D camera. Let me take a little step back. Ray Zone was probably the single biggest advocate for Stereoscopic 3-D imaging that could ever be compiled in a living being. He was very positive, loveable and really interested in everything you had to say.

I was opening my semi-secret gallery and screening space in the dark corner of Skid Row in LA. My very first film screening was a selection of Mike Kuchar's videos. I flew him to LA and set him up in my apartment/gallery. It was his first time to LA in almost 3 decades. It was a great show with a full house including Mr. Ray Zone. I believe it was the first time Ray had seen Mike's work, but he knew of Mike's reputation. Ray being the generous person that he is and also always trying to spread the gospel of 3D gave Mike the new Fuji W3 Finepix 3D camera telling Mike that he "just wanted to see what he would do with it".

Mike graciously accepted the camera and when he returned to his home, San Francisco, he began making plans to start on a new project. Mike shot a few scenes with some of his regular stars, but at a certain point he simply had to abandon the project. You must understand, Mike is a very traditional filmmaker. Sometime in the 80's he transitioned from film to video and later still he transitioned to digital video tape. All of these processes are radically different and each transition took many years for him to master. Now, in his 70's, he seems reluctant to make the transition to digital video files (SD card) based footage. This is due mostly to the fact that he has no computer and no way of editing the footage.

The camera sat on the shelf with the footage for months. It sat as Mike witnessed his brother, George, fight his battle with cancer and lose. It sat for another year when Ray unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and left us with endless questions.

Eventually, Mike decided to give me the camera. He knew I worked in 3D and lucky for us all the footage that Mike shot was still on the card in the camera.

I started working on the footage, but quickly realized that even though the W3 camera is revolutionary in putting 3D easily into the hands of anyone it still has many bugs. With this camera there is a problem with the alignment of the two images and for 3D that is an enormous problem. It's basically the difference between seeing 3-D and giving everyone a headache. So, I spend much time fixing the footage to prepare it for editing.

Now I am finally at the stage of editing. It's still going to take more time, but for now I have a few images for you to see - to be viewed in anaglyph (red-blue) glasses.  Not perfect, but getting there.

Artist in Residence

In February I begin my AIR (Artist in Residence) at the EPFC (Echo Park Film Center).  I have a lot of things I'm preparing for this right now.  So check back for updates.

For now keep in mind I will have a screening with a few films including a brand new one I will be completing for this residency, which will take place on Thursday Feb 28th.

I will also be hosting a workshop on film projection and expanded cinema on February 23rd starting around noon.  As a projectionist for over 10 years and the current head projectionist at RedCat you might learn a thing or two ;)  I'll also be discussing some of my secrets of when I do live visual or expanded cinema performances.

"East" texts and info

This new project is all about different parts of LA that are over looked.  I am currently calling "East" and the other day I had an explosion of ideas about what I want to shoot and how I want to put it together.

I will open with the following quote from Robert Smithson from his article "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey":
 "Picture in your mind's eye [a] sand box divided in half with black sand on one side and white sand on the other.  We take a child and have him run hundreds of times clockwise in the box until the sand gets mixed and begins to turn grey; after that we have him run anti-clockwise, but the result will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase of entropy."

Then I want to follow that with this text that I wrote the other day:
"Just as popular media neglects important topics, under represented people and identities it also neglects places.  In the most photographed city in the world there are endless miles that are rarely if ever exposed to the world.  This area is know as East LA."

I made these notes:
Show multiple scenes & places and between each location have a matching shot - i.e. from Vernon zoom into the Sears Building then cut to Sears and neighborhood.

each location ~ 5 min
~ 120 min in total
24 locations
19 locations and 5 interludes

Interludes timelapse x2 timelapse 1: night, lights, driving cars timelapse 2: sunrise/set etc 2nd Street Tunnel 6th St bridge tunnel chopper ride over LA ($ permitting) Blueline ride

Locations Vernon Chinatown Watts - Inglewood downtown - Bway theatres Santa Fe and Train yard LA River Sears Building (Boyle Heights) Fashion District Jefferson Park (empty hotels) Griffith Park - abandoned Zoo Little Tokyo Highland Park El Sereno Monterey Park Baldwin Park Linclon Heights Olvera St Cypress Park El Monte Skid Row

I also forgot to mention that I'm planning on shooting as much as possible by bicycle (or hand held) and then later stabilizing it (there is soo much jittering on a bicycle it doesn't look very good).  I want to make this film in the most alternative way possible.  I never want to be in too much control of the scenery (unlike Hollywood that wants to lock off every bit of our world), use as little dirty energy as possible and do this almost completely by myself.  I hope to have some friends help me shoot. Mostly cause I'm afraid of shooting with a $1K camera in some of these areas all alone.  This is usually how I make things and it's not exactly a new technique, but often people use the term do-it-yourself to try and get away with poor looking productions.

Here is an example that I shot a few weeks ago on the Blueline train going north.

Forgotten City

The Southland.  City of Industry. La La  Land. City of Angels. There are very few cities that are discussed regularly in a metaphysical context.  New York, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Jerusalem, Las Vegas, DC and possibly one or two others.  But there is only one city that is pretty much only refered to in a metaphysical manor which is simultaneously alluring and revolting.  Los Angeles is a city that seems to bring out the extremes in people.  You either love it or hate it and any emotions in between is left to Pasadena or Orange County, the Valley or possibly Long Beach. Certainly a significant amount of discourse has been created to try and define or explain the phenomenon that is Los Angeles.  Thom Anderson creates a brilliant picture of this in his film "Los Angeles Plays Itself" by stating that to the outside world there is no difference between "Hollywood" and "Los Angeles", but within the cities confines there is a radical difference.

Paul Arthur describes LA with an analogy by stating that "nowhere in America are the imperative of high and low culture so blurred."  There is certainly something to that.  If we split things into two camps with vulgarly obtuse terms such as "Hollywood" and "other art forms" within this city - like music and fashion.  Hollywood equals pop-culture movie making, commercial advertising and artificial representation spectacle.  "Underground" art forms of music and fashion thrive in this city, but if an individual from music or fashion is introduced to a "Hollywood" interaction they will certainly jump at the chance and in a way they end up reinforcing larger subtext to this city that is semi-conscious, but not always obvious.

This city screams pop-culture.  If you do not support nor idolize pop-culture you might as well not exist.  "Hollywood" is an overwhelming place. On a clear day the sign can be seen all the way down to South Central, Inglewood, Watts and Hawthorne.  The shadow looms over all parts of the city and those that are born here feel the intense class divide and, in a way, they idolize pop-culture that much more because of it's dark shadow and it's unattainable status.

This creates a very strange paradigm for those who have either no interest in popular culture or are strongly opposed to it.  By no means would I consider someone in this outsider camp any kind of counter culture or subculture.  Anyone who does not drink the pop-culture cool-aid is simply ignored.  The most apt description would be that it is an "Other" culture, in all the complications that the word "other" has become. 

The "other" culture is the outsider, the sick, the different, the disgusting, the taboo and anyone outside the commonalities of the LA life style, who does not praise excess wealth or attention, is certainly ignored and treated as disgusting. NYC might have a lot of attention for it's complexity, but LA gains more attention pretty much because of it's attention.

However, it is also the most regulated city when it comes to representation.  In NYC you only need a filming permit once you lay down a camera track or need to close off a location, but in LA you need a permit to shoot in any and all circumstances.  In Japan I had no problems shooting anywhere I wanted with a small crew from TBS, the largest TV station in Japan. LA follows the rules of image capturing.  Hell, it creates the rules. You cannot shoot unless you have everything signed off and the rules are laid out.  And the city complies whole-heartedly and gives Hollywood eminent domain over anywhere and everywhere it wishes - local communities and commerce be damned.

Everywhere you can find a location at any time of day where there is a building or street that is shut down for a shoot.  Often times the shoot is really a commercial, but the crew always knows better then to tell the public that.  If anyone asks a crew member will always say that it's a movie or TV show in a way to add acceptance to the shoot.  After all, if it's just a commercial then passers-by might not be so accepting of them to shoot there.  However, if there is a protest and the streets are shut down then passers-by are belligerent, hateful and angry.

And just as Anderson describes, the city attempts to mask itself.  It is either a stand-in for another city or it's no city at all.  If ever it is supposed to be Los Angeles then rarely, if ever, do you see a distinct setting. However, the whole city of Los Angeles is expansive.  Just about everywhere in Los Angeles County is considered apart of the city as well.  Everything north of Long Beach  all the way to Oxnard.  From the Beach to the desert.  It is endless.  And in the same fashion that Hollywood is only willing to show pretty people it is also only interested in pretty places or, if it's not pretty, it's at the very least convenient.

It is from this enormous metaphysical dialogue that I am constantly having with myself which has lead me to start a new project.  I know what you're thinking. How many projects can I work on at once.  Well, the answer is a lot.  Too many.  But I keep going places and as much as this city disgusts me there is a large part that I am in awe of.  Shall I name off the old downtown cinema's that have the most exquisite marquees that I have ever seen?  Million Dollar Theatre, Orpheium, the Mayan, United Artists, Los Angeles, the State, the Regent and my current favorite, the Tower, which still has old advertisements on it's back and side.  They are all so decedent, eloquent and unforgettable.  (In NYC all the old cinemas on Broadway were eradicated by Giuliani in order to clean up the city - a similar initiative is expanding from Figueroa and making it's way to Santa Fe).

The Sears building in East LA has such a complex history to it and it is completely mind boggling.  In one area you can still enter and purchase your hardware supplies and on the back side you can see the history where the loading docks brought in endless supplies when it was the West Coast's largest supply store.  The green neon still glows for miles in all directions.  Olvera Street is a throw-back to Los Angeles, Mexico and still possesses exclusively Mexican merchants that sell useless trinkets, clothing and crystallized sugar fruits that'll make you sick to your stomach.

And so the most subversive thing I can do in LA is to shoot illegally and expose all the areas that are overlooked, ignored and still beautiful.  In New York there's an endless sea of solo filmmakers shooting 16mm, S8 or DV.  San Francisco and Chicago it's not as prominent, but there are still a handful of people shooting on a weekly basis.  LA, the only people shooting illegally are fashion photographers shooting stills.

This should be done while it still can.  LA Live has already infiltrated and the new football stadium is all but built.  Soon it will all be white washed and cleansed.  Midnight Mission will be relocated and the expansive sea of homeless in the East side of downtown will be uprooted and displaced. They say the real-estate market has always controlled and will always control any major change or development in LA.

They recently announced on NPR that developers bought out two live-in hotel buildings on Los Angeles Street (the first street of Skid Row that is one block East of gentrified downtown - the 100'  difference is appalling).  These are the same live-in hotels that pocket all parts of downtown and are home to thousands that were able to get subsidized rent.  The same that are apart of the Alexandria and the Rosslyn Hotels that are now overrun with artists.  And we all know that the artists simply make way for the yuppies, the American aristocrats.  Aristocrats with artificial class. Soon the East side of downtown will become the new Bunker Hill.

There may still be signs for Bunker Hill downtown, but that neighborhood is completely and utterly erased from existence. Bunker Hill was a run down part of downtown on the North West corner.  Old Victorian houses lined the streets and it was available cheap housing for poor families. Now it has been replaced by hotels, museums and the ugliest building in human history- the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Many know of the old railways that filled downtown LA, but few even realize that many of the tracks from the old Red and Yellow lines are sill under that pavement in downtown LA.  Actually, much of the streets where the rails live the pavement has eroded away and reveal the left over and forgotten tracks.  This has become an eye-sore to city government and so have the old crossing signs that are still in and around Santa Fe Street, but they are the most beautiful parts of Los Angeles to me.  Every year there seems to be a little less rail and a little more asphalt.  And a little part of me dies.

Gentrification not only displaces families, but it also destroys history.  Frankly, I don't really understand the purpose of gentrification.  There are already thousands of locations that are already "beautiful" where yuppies can go live, but instead they want to make an "ugly" place "beautiful" for them.  Well, I think my neighborhood in Skid Row is beautiful with the rails coming out of the ground, rust covering the fences, trash littering the ground, junkies sleeping in the alley ways.

The Digital Dilemma of Experimental Cinema

And so, now we find ourselves at a crossroads.  The few of us that have wondered our brains into the forest of Experimental Cinema have found a wall.  The box that we are outside of and originally left behind has become stifling.  The new world that we have imagined has a limitation.  A roadblock upon aesthetics has barred many from being open-minded in their open-mindedness.  Technology has forced us to take sides in a foolish battle.  Experimental Cinema has become the last battleground for celluloid film.

There has been much speculation over the decades upon the end of film in which video will succeed the throne of the field.  It has become an endless dialogue how analog film will end.  Because of this and because video shares some fundamental qualities that are different from film many filmmakers, curators and fans of Experimental Cinema (and all cinema) have rejected video.  It is a radical change to put upon a system that is over 100 years old.  So many have devoted their lives in order to understand it perfectly and now it is completely deconstructed by a different medium.  A medium!  And nothing more.

Virtually all other areas of cinema have accepted this new form in which to use the same techniques.  Large production narrative, television and advertisement (aka Hollywood) have been behind funding this development.  It has made previously difficult processes become significantly easier – and at the same time they had added more expectations and workload to the productions.  Documentary, world and “independent” cinema use it as a means to cut the budget and shift funding.  Home movies became significantly less hassle with equipment easier to understand.

Digital has become the standard and it is almost because of this that the culture of Experimental Cinema is unwilling to unclench its fist from the 16mm reel.  The question then becomes – is it rigger mortise? 

Will this last stand for celluloid cinema kill the world of Experimental Cinema?  But I need to stop for a moment.  Surely there is a whole chorus of voices now who are angry because I am saying that digital is better then analog.  Do not be mistaken, dear friend!  My love for celluloid will never be extinguished!  However, you cannot deny the strong generalized rejection of digital “filmmaking” in the Experimental Cinema culture.  It is very similar to a certain artist by the name of R. Mutt who in the first half of the 20^th Centruy caused a tornado of kerfuffle when many declared his found art piece, “The Fountain,” not to be art.

Rejection to such an unnecessary extent as this is what I like to call “The Aesthetics of Rejection.”  It comes when an individual rejects a certain artwork or medium as “not being art”.  Certainly, this can be applied to more then just the world of art and cinema.  Indeed, a colleague of mine, a very intelligent individual who had strong passion for Socialism and the films of Godard and Eisenstein actually told me once that video games are not art.  I was appalled.  However, most people have learned much since the days of R. Mutt, however.  People usually do not reject something outright as “not art”.  Most use a disgusting categorization in which the culture of Experimental Cinema was invented by breaking – “good” or “bad” (also known as “high” or “low” art).

Anyone who is familiar with Experimental Cinema is familiar with the standpoint that video/digital is “not good” or “low quality” or some how displeasing.  I implore you not to follow in this path.  It is segregation!  One is not better then the other.  They are merely two different tools and each possesses different qualities.  I can only imagine the day when a pupil came to his teacher with a sponge instead of a brush in which to paint with and the lashing the pupil received for such an offence.

There is also the other even more revolting argument.  No, assumption!  The assumption that working in film is significantly more difficult then working digitally.  This somehow gives merit or validation to considering one form of cinema “good” and the other “bad”.  This is often an argument made by critics who have never used a movie camera in their lives.  I assert once again that the tools are merely different and some things are easier in film and others digital.  Anyone who has spent nights rendering 1000 frames in Autodesk Maya with 4 layers per frame each at 30 seconds rendering time per layer only to realize that you had one thing slightly off and it ruined your whole scene knows what I am talking about.  Anyone who has used Mental Ray would never say that digital is easier then film.  Even now with the dieing businesses of film development laboratories, it can be faster to send a roll of film to be processed and get it returned to you than to have a scene rendered from a CGI animation package.

Therefore, it is absolutely preposterous to make any judgment call about which is better or which is worse.  The only thing that the aesthetics of rejection reveal is what forms of art people don’t like.  A story can be poorly written.  An image can be badly composed, but a medium cannot in its entirety be bad.  If you do not like digital filmmaking then just state that.  That is at least a respectable stance.  I do not particularly care for Heavy Metal.  By no means would I consider Heavy Metal not to be music.  How absurd; I wouldn’t even consider it to be bad.  I just don’t like it.  And even within that I subject myself to live performances of such music because I enjoy music; I want to be persuaded to like Heavy Metal; I enjoy the atmosphere of a music event; it opens my mind as to the possibilities of our world.  (In fact, the films that I learn the most from are the films that I do not like - they teach me what I never want to do in my work.)

Yet, you can see everywhere in our current culture of Experimental Cinema that film is virtually the only accepted method of making our form of art.  Young artists who come to fruition are only accepted if they work in film.  Certainly, those who only work in film and are successful are likely to be very good filmmakers, but there are an equal number of filmmakers artists who work digitally whose pieces you might significantly enjoy, but since the Experimental Cinema world looks down upon digital works you will never be exposed to them.  Most often these individuals turn to a different world where they are more accepted – "interdisciplinary art", "multimedia art", "new media", etc.

“But there are many filmmakers who work in digital video that we will always watch.”

Who? Jonas Mekas? Su Fredrich? Ken Jacobs? The Kuchar Brothers?  This is only because they were already accepted as filmmakers before they picked up a video camera.  They were already infallible and therefore did not receive the wrath of the aesthetics of rejection.

How many who consider themselves to be studious and wellsprings of knowledge of Experimental Filmmakers even know the names Miwa Matreyek or Dr. Strangeloop (David Wexler)?  Certainly, there will be some.  However, both artists have become world-renowned and both attribute more influence to filmmakers who are generally accepted under the umbrella of “Experimental Cinema” then other artists, but both are rarely discussed in our culture.  Why?

If we let these authoritative rules hinder us our field will become stagnant and we will let it die.  Experimental Cinema will end with the final filmmaker who became known with their films.  By no means am I making a case for filmmakers to stop working with film.  I hope celluloid sees many more years, but critics and fans who really and truly love “Experimental Cinema” must accept digital if it is to continue.  For if we are actually the expansive thinkers who can see meaning amongst the abstracted shadows on the walls of the cave then we must have a perception that is expansive enough to accept digital.  Let no boundaries stop us!  Let us re-radicalize “Experimental Cinema”!

Experimental Cinema is a Radicalizer

At what point in a career does one establish a rationale for experimental cinema?  How long after a medium’s formation is it still acceptable to describe its purpose?

There is no reason to limit a date of publication for logic.  The difficulty is that there is already much history of written text upon the subject and even upon this very topic.  The history of experimental cinema is equal in length to the history of cinema and now with well over 100 years of cinema there is also 100 years of cinema rhetoric.

However, just like everything it is subject to constant change, constant analysis and constant invention.  The most important concept to retain throughout this spilling out of ideas is, at the very least, an attempt to avoid reinventing the wheel.  I will start by stating that for as long as possible I will stick to the singular term “experimental cinema.”  Only so that I do not digress into the endless cycle of terminology semantics and nuances of “experimental,” “abstract,” “avant-garde.”  But rest assured I mean to use the term “experimental cinema” to encompass all these terms and more.  And, specifically for the purposes of this article, the limitations of the term are not defined by the writer, but by the reader and movie-goer.

Experimental cinema is a radicalizer.  By its very nature and function it has the potential to change people very extremely – to radicalize them.  How can this be?  How can such a passive recreation of cinema instigate such a shock?  Let’s set the scene, shall we.

It is an old scene. In fact, it is older then some societies, religions, cultures.  It is the cave analogy.  Whether Plato invented it or if it was indeed created by some figure named Socrates makes little difference now, but is now immortalized in the classic text The Republic.  It is a stage described many times again and again.  For our purposes it is quite apt.  It is really a very good description of what a cinema must have been like in the 3^rd Century BCE.  We start with a cave and in this cave we have individuals, let’s call them slaves because in Socrates mind they pretty much were.  These slaves are locked in a seated position and forced to stare at a wall.  They have restraints so that they are unable to move their heads.  Upon the wall are shadow and these shadows are created form a glowing fire, which is behind the slaves.  And in between the slaves and the fire are people, or projectionists - if you will, who pull out stocks of shapes – a horse, trees, cows, sheep, people, hills, buildings.  These shapes are brought up to where their shadow is brought into the filed of vision of the slaves and then removed, replaced by another shape, which is thusly removed and the cycle goes on.

The slaves are made to believe that this is the full scope and reality of the world.  Socrates invents this mythical world to describe the state of his world saying that the people who are marveled and praised are those who are like a slave that has a great skill of predicting correctly as to which shadow that will be the next to appear before it comes into view.  In his mind, a philosopher is damned with a punishment of knowledge because they are like a slave who is released and able to leave the cave and able to see the world as it truly is.  A freed slave who then returns to the cave describing to the other slaves what this real world is like and the fiction of their existence and their foolish guessing game is ridiculed as being delusional and crazy.  And Socrates continues to describe a world ruled by philosopher kings and the society they will create in a perfect world, which goes quite beyond our immediate needs at the current moment in relation to Experimental Cinema.

Let us take this scene and reverse it.  Not so much in it’s power structure nor it’s scenario, but within it’s linear structure.  We start with a free people. They wonder about this world their entire lives seeing the world as it is.  Over time they take it for granted, but still continue living.  At one point one individual enters a cave lead in by strange discolorations on the rocks that seem to have a shape or meaning.  They are lead further and further back until they find huge shadows upon the wall and a comfortable seat, which makes for easy viewing of these shadows.  At first the shadow catches their eye because it is moving, but they cannot make sense of it.  After some time they begin to realize that the shapes are representations.  It takes quite a bit of pondering and conjuring, but they eventually see the shapes as signifying of objects that they know from outside the cave.  Symbols, representations or abstracts that take some time to explore with one’s imagination in order to make the connection to the referential object.  These shadows deviate from their originals.  They are two-dimensional, without color, different in size, alternate design and they also bare some other characteristics that function in order to resemble the original, but through simplification.  For example, there is a figure, which is a circle with lines protruding directly out from it to represent the sun.  The original sun has no lines protruding from it, but the lines work as an abstract representation of rays of light extruding from the sun.

The forms of images begin as fairly representational.  Their shape is proportionally the same as the originals with only slight mental adjustments and explorations into personal imagination does the individual make sense of the shadows.  The shadows continue and the individual starts to realize there is a correlation between the images.  It is telling a story.  This story starts out realistic and after some time delves into an imaginary world where real objects are converted yet again so that they are harder to distinguish from their original.  Still after some pondering and analysis of these new shadows does the individual continue to distinguish the symbolic meaning of the shadows.  The story further continues into alterations and more alterations of reality until the objects are completely abstract.  It is at this that the individual is baffled.  S/he takes labors mentally over these new and completely foreign objects.  They leave the cave and are dizzy with confusion then return again to attempt to make sense of the objects once again.  Finally it hits him/her that these objects are solitary – they symbolize no referential object.  There is no name as to call each of these objects.  They are to be accepted purely for what they are and nothing more.

At this we have come to the radicalizing moment.  If the individual accepts this then they become radicalized.

Now the individual returns to the external world with his/her friends and colleagues.  S/he describes for them of this marvelous other world with new and different objects.  They begin to understand other objects and concepts of their former world as also possessing the ability to have alternative expressions.  First it starts simple.  "How is this plate both a function for eating and an abstract sculpture at the same time?  What are other ways we can make a plate that is radically different but still carry a function?"  Then it goes beyond simple everyday items.  "If I squint while looking at this tree it becomes a completely abstract shape and has beauty to it.  At what point is the tree no longer a tree?  Is it determined by how I look at it?"  Eventually over time they explore larger world concepts of sociological, political, cultural and philosophical navigations.  "What other ways can government exist that they might be abstracted, but still carry a purpose?"

Their friends and colleagues will think they are delusional or hallucinating, but individual assures them that what they have witnessed is true.  “So, what you have seen is real?” one might say. 

“Well, yes.  And no.” s/he would answer. 

“And these different and other worldly objects, they are real?”

“Both yes and somehow no.”

“Well, how can this one thing exist and not exist?  And this other world with other governments and other countries and other economies, how can they exist if your impetus carries such a flawed genesis?”

“It might be possible that if you also see this then you will understand this alternative world.”

So, the individual takes his/her colleague to the cave.  However, in this case the colleague does not accept what they see when an abstract appears in their field of view.

“Do you not see this strange object that represents only an abstract form?”

“All I see is a shadow and nothing more.”

“But the shadow has a representation of a large meaning beyond what you can see.”

“The shadow’s only meaning is that it is a shadow.  You’re ideas are flawed from the start.  I will bother no more with this.”

And so we are left to ourselves, but now the seed is born.  As we’ve accepted experimental cinema we must accept and even instigate experimental life-styles, experimental habits, experimental logic.  A notch has turned in our brain.  What was previously not possible has become possible.  What was previously out of our angle of view we now see because our view has become so wide that the horizon has disappeared.  Reality holds a myriad of possibilities.  Realization is brought upon because of the field we engulf ourselves in.