Thoughts

Sometimes something occurs that transcends the film's own self-awareness and its procedures. Something that exceeds formal discipline. Something happens: in the rite of projection it acquires an autonomy of its own, manifests as an involuntary force. Something that cannot be attributed either to the filmmaker's ingenuity or to the spectator's discernment.

There are films that produce the sensation of opening a world. And that world which opens demands a pact of faith: an initial trust, a surrender on the part of the still body in the theatre. To believe; to yield to what appears.

It seems to me that the kind of reception that makes cinematic projection possible possesses a mythic dimension, because it disposes the psyche in an archaic attitude, founded on absolute surrender to the world that arrives. Is this what we call Narrative? Not necessarily an argument, not necessarily a story, but something of much older roots: the intuition that the world and its elements speak, express themselves, speak to us.

Something inhabits things.

A living world, where everything is woven in a reciprocal listening. Not the modern separation, not the distance of the one who discerns, but the naive surrender of one who loves.

The camera reveals a secret life of things. This oracular capacity of the camera is brought close to the community, measured and contained by montage. The edited film makes it possible to integrate that oracular power into the heart of a shared experience.

The blinding transparency of the shot is obscured, filtered, inserted into the context of a tradition that protects that non-human eye in order to allow it to reveal something fertile for human life.

The filmmaker plans, elaborates ways of proceeding, rehearses approaches. But is it not the decisive moment when he obeys the order of the world and abandons control? More than an author, the filmmaker intervenes as a servant, as someone summoned by the spirit of the film that calls him to be born. The filmmaker is a servant.

Does not the essential of his work, of his sensibility, reside in knowing how far? The precise point where to abandon the camera, to stop moving it, to stop framing, to stop cutting: the exact instant in which things reveal themselves as expressive through a force intrinsic to themselves.

What life keeps, cinema now reveals in the experience of gathering in the dark theatre.

Why do we find ourselves in a cinema? What do we secretly seek?

Cinema: an invention that protects an antiquated disposition, the possibility of keeping silence.

Sound traverses the theatre like an invisible vibratory force that grants the film its vital breath. It is its breathing. The impossibility of separating the sonic matter in the dark theatre allows that vibration to break free from the rational and technical filter more quickly.

Attitude of total surrender; pact of faith: primordial condition for the film to open a world.

The lights go out. A world opens, a dream. A sealed time imposes a duration on the phantoms that are reflected in the space. Again: the impossibility of control for the body in the theatre.

The connection with the oneiric experience is inescapable.

Gathered in the dark theatre, contained by the sonic vibration that traverses and transforms the atmosphere —an atmosphere illuminated by recognisable elements, presences determined by their corporeal absence—, one surrenders to the play of the illusory and the unreal. The pores of the unconscious open, beginning to penetrate the particles of the air.

To fall asleep and remain ecstatic: two sides of the same coin in the experience of projection.

Spectral images mix with zones of experience that no longer belong to wakefulness. In that moment, one is no longer watching a film. One breathes in time with the panting of a creature that has made itself present in the dark theatre.

The true and the false can no longer do anything here, because we have entered the realm of magic. The veil of thought is frayed. Weak thought.

If "It" occurs, all attempt to understand suddenly disappears, even to identify a formal grammar. No effort to comprehend or hypothesise about "It" that comes and solicits us, about that Being that summons us to its kingdom. Vague thought.

Thoughts emancipate themselves and cease to belong to us. There is no longer a centre that orders them. Now the body is here. Here, and nowhere else.

Consciousness returns to its primitive simplicity: there is no longer consciousness of anything. There is no conscious development, but rather —or in any case— a regression. The origin of consciousness. Its birth.

For the first time, as each time: barely an opening of the eyes, a stunned listening, an astonishment. The consciousness of the child at play. The throbbing, vast world. Everything presents itself alive, new. The pristine consciousness.

We stop speaking, speaking to ourselves, and for an instant something in us sees, listens. The supple mind, the virgin body.

Suddenly, something connects in an unforeseeable way. When the chain of deductions and inductions was already dismantled, an impossible association arrives. A miracle.

Makes sense, it is said in English: more than making sense, sense is made; it happens like a bolt of lightning. The union is revealed.

The dark theatre bears witness to the founding of a total Here. The creature receives us. Now yes: the world speaks in its own name, without translators.

Miracles such as these populate that invention we call Cinema.

Why do we gather in a dark theatre?